RUM custom dashboards

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Overview

A custom dashboard is an extra tab in the Insights tab bar, next to the built-in Overview, Performance, Errors and Resources tabs. Each dashboard holds panels (charts), and a panel’s query is the Explorer’s analytics question: event type + aggregation + group-by field + DQL filter. That makes a one-off analysis such as “which browsers do the errors come from” or “which page loads slowest” a dashboard you can keep coming back to, without rebuilding the query.

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Entry points and routes

The + menu at the right of the tab bar has two items:

• New dashboard: opens an empty dashboard in edit mode. This needs the Dashboards Manage permission; without it, the item is not shown.
• Manage dashboards: opens the management page; viewing it needs no edit permission.

The tab bar lists every dashboard by title, up to 100; beyond that, reach the rest from the management page.

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Application and time range

• A dashboard follows the application and time range in the top-right corner of the page. When you open a dashboard whose link carries no time range, the dashboard’s own default time range applies; changing the time range on a dashboard also changes the page’s time picker.
• Switching tabs carries the page’s application and time range over. A dashboard’s env, service and version variables and the matching filters of the built-in tabs are translated into each other; other variables are not carried across tabs.

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Panel types

The panel editor’s Visualization offers four kinds:

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Adding a panel

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Panel queries

A panel query has the same parts as the Explorer’s analytics view: Group-by fields are limited by field cardinality, exactly as in the Explorer (see Analytics · Group-by field): a field that is an event’s own ID cannot be grouped by, and any other high-cardinality field takes Count or Sum only, with a time range of at most 7 days. When the result is estimated from a sample, the panel shows a Sampled badge and its explanation.

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Dashboard variables

The variable bar sits at the top of the dashboard. A new dashboard starts with three field variables, env, service and version, all defaulting to All (All means no condition).

• Reference a variable in a panel’s DQL as ${name} or $name, such as env:${env}. A variable with several values expands to (a OR b); with All selected, or with no value, the whole condition holding the reference (env:${env}, -env:${env}, NOT env:${env}, and a value list containing it) is dropped rather than queried as an empty value.
• References are replaced in the browser before the query runs, so a panel’s DQL has to fill in into a complete statement to return data.
• A new panel’s filter starts with the dashboard’s field variables that its event type has.
• Renaming a variable rewrites the queries that reference it; a variable still referenced cannot be deleted until those references are cleaned up.
• Variable selections are kept in the link (parameters such as var-env=...), so copying the link shares the same selection.

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Saving from the Explorer

In the Explorer’s analytics chart toolbar, Save to dashboard turns the current question into a dashboard panel:

• The chart type can be Time series / Table / Stat; pies and distributions are not supported yet and the button says “Pies and distributions cannot be saved to a dashboard yet”.
• You can append to an existing dashboard (its edit mode opens with this panel appended, and nothing is written before you save), or create a new dashboard (a dashboard holding just this panel is created first, then its edit mode opens).
• The panel keeps the current time range and filter and picks up the dashboard’s env / service / version variables; its title is generated from the query.

For the procedure and limits, see Analytics · Saving to a dashboard.

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Table drill-down

Every row of a Table panel carries an “Open in Explorer: field = value” link. Clicking it opens the Explorer’s analytics view with the panel’s query and aggregation, its filter narrowed to that row’s group value, over the dashboard’s current time range.

• A table without a group-by has no drill-down link.
• When a group value contains characters that a DQL condition cannot express exactly, such as quotes or brackets, the link matches by wildcard instead, and its title is marked “(approximate wildcard match)”.

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Version history and restore

Version history in the dashboard’s ⋯ menu opens the version list:

• Each save (deleting and restoring included) produces a new version; the most recent 20 versions are kept and older ones are pruned.
• The table lists the version (v1, v2, …), its time, the actor and the message, and marks the current version as current. While the dialog is open, tick two versions and click Compare to diff what each one saved.
• Restoring an earlier version saves that version’s content as a new version, so the version you restored from stays in the history and you can restore back to it.

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Deleting and the trash

• Delete in the dashboard’s ⋯ menu moves the dashboard to the trash; the confirmation names the dashboard and says it “will be moved to trash and purged after 30 days.”
• Trash on the management page lists deleted dashboards with the note “Deleted dashboards are kept for 30 days and can be restored here.”; the restore icon at the end of a row puts the dashboard back in the list and in the tab bar.
• A dashboard left in the trash for more than 30 days is purged and cannot be restored.

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Permissions

Creating, editing, deleting and restoring a dashboard needs the Dashboards Manage permission. Without it:

• the + menu has no New dashboard, and the management page has no New dashboard button and no delete or restore entry;
• a dashboard has no Edit, and its ⋯ menu has no Clone or Delete;
• you can still view every dashboard, change its variables and time range, and inspect its content with Export JSON and Version history.

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Limits

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Next steps