Create a dashboard

Dashboards provide a single location for important metrics that you care about. When you create a custom dashboard, a dashboard layout opens containing a single region with an empty chart widget and an empty text box widget. Edit a chart to incorporate real-time metrics into your dashboard, and edit a text box to provide information. Finally adjust the layout and add more widgets to complete your dashboard and begin monitoring your network.

Before you begin

Determine which metrics you want to monitor on your dashboard. Ask yourself the following questions:
  • Do I want to track if my server is offline or unavailable? Add availability metrics such as requests and responses to your dashboard charts.
  • Is my server functioning properly? Add reliability metrics such as errors to your dashboard charts.
  • Is my server properly resourced? Add performance metrics such as server processing time to your dashboard charts.

Create the dashboard layout

The following steps show you how to create the framework for your dashboard, which includes two empty widget types: a chart and a text box. Your new dashboard opens in Edit Layout mode (which is displayed in the upper right corner). Edit Layout mode enables you to quickly edit your chart and text box, and arrange the placement of widgets and regions on a dashboard.

  1. Log in to the ExtraHop system through https://<extrahop-hostname-or-IP-address>.
  2. At the top of the page, click Dashboards.
  3. On the Dashboards page, complete one of the following steps:
    • Click Dashboards in the dashboard dock and then click Create Dashboard at the bottom of the dock.
    • Click the command menu in the upper right corner of the page and select New Dashboard.
  4. In the Dashboard Properties window, type a name for your dashboard.
  5. Enter any other meta data for your dashboard, such as a name for the author or a description. Note that the Permalink provides a direct URL to your dashboard for any users who have sharing privileges for your dashboard.
  6. Click Create.

Edit a basic chart

The following steps show the general flow for editing a chart widget in the Metric Explorer tool. Begin by specifying sources and metrics to add data to your chart. For example, you can now add the availability, reliability, or performance metrics that you considered at the beginning of this procedure to your dashboard. Then choose a chart type to visualize the data.

  1. Click the chart to launch the Metric Explorer.
  2. Click Add Source.
  3. In the source search field, type the name of a source and then select the source from the search results.
  4. In the metric search field, type the protocol and metric name and then select the metric you want to add to the chart from the search results. For example, to monitor the reliability of web transactions, type HTTP errors and then select HTTP Errors from the search results.
  5. Select a chart type from the bottom of the Metric Explorer.
    Some charts might not be compatible with your selected metrics. For example, the heatmap chart can only display dataset metric data, such as server processing time. For more information about charts and compatible metrics, see Chart types.
  6. (Optional): Select a drill down key to view detail metrics. Click Drill down by <None>, where <None> is the name of the detail metric key currently displayed in your chart. You can view up to 20 top key values in a chart for a specific time interval.
  7. Click Save.

Next steps

Edit a basic text box widget

The following steps show you how to display custom text in a dashboard region, which is a helpful tool for adding notes about a chart or data in a dashboard. The text box widget supports the Markdown syntax. A new text box widget contains sample text that is already formatted in Markdown to provide you with basic examples.

  1. Click the text box.
  2. Type and edit text in the left Editor pane. The HTML output text dynamically displays in the right Preview pane. For more formatting examples, see Format text in Markdown.
  3. Click Save.

Add more widgets and regions to your dashboard

Add and arrange the placement of regions and widgets on your dashboards.

  1. Click-and-drag dashboard components, such as a region or widgets, from the bottom of the page onto the workspace.
  2. To arrange dashboard components, click-and-drag the edge of a region or widget to resize them. If dashboard components overlap, they will be outlined in red. You must click and drag the sides of the widgets and regions to make room.
  3. (Optional): Click Remove Extra Space to remove the empty vertical white space around widgets. Empty vertical white space will be removed from every region on the dashboard.
  4. After making your changes, click Exit Layout Mode.
    Note:If an error message appears, another user might be making changes. It is best practice for each ExtraHop user to have an individual account.

Next steps

Now that your dashboard is complete, you can perform the following steps:

Chart editing tips

The following tips help you search for and select metrics when building a chart.

  • Filter search results to a specific source type or protocol by clicking Any Type or Any Protocol underneath the search fields.
  • You can only select the same source type that is currently in your metric set. A metric set contains one source type and metrics. For example, if you select the All Activity application as the source, you can only add more applications to that metric set.
  • Create an ad hoc group of more than one source in your chart by selecting Combine Sources. For example, you can combine two applications and then view a single metric value in the chart for both of these applications.
  • If you select a device group as your source, you can Drill down by Group Member to display individual metrics for up to 20 of the devices within the group.
Last modified 2024-02-23