Connect and explore
The truly value of data is realized when you can dive in and and explore it. Static values on a dashboard are useful, but data you can interact with is powerful.
SquaredUp’s Connect and Explore feature bring your systems, objects, and signals together in one place. Even better, they help you understand relationships, surface insights, and make faster, better-informed decisions.
The following explains how to get started with turning your data into tangible, operationally intelligent, gold.
Why connectivity matters
Traditional observability has you connect a few data sources and create pretty visualizations. A great start, but these days it's simply not enough.
In today's complex environments what organizations need to cut through the noise is genuine operational intelligence, and this only emerges when we combine observability with data you can touch and feel.
SquaredUp's features offer a level of insight that static dashboards simply can’t match. While a dashboard provides a helpful high-level snapshot, drilling into those objects lets you explore the full context behind the numbers. This lets you discover health states, relationships, dependencies, and the underlying data that drive those metrics.
This depth of exploration helps you move from just “what happened” to “why it happened”, making it easier to validate assumptions, troubleshoot issues, and make confident decisions. Instead of relying on fixed views, you can interact with live data, follow dependencies across systems, and uncover the root cause of problems in seconds.
Connecting to your data
SquaredUp supports a broad range of cloud-based data sources, giving you the freedom to integrate the systems that power your organization in a single location.
In the case that a system you want to integrate with a system which isn't listed, you can use the Web API or PowerShell plugin to establish your own connection.
For on-premises environments, Relay Agents provide a secure connection, allowing you to import data without exposing internal infrastructure to the cloud.
Plugins and data sources
Plugins are lightweight connectors to your data sources. They import objects and properties from external systems and expose them through data streams in the Tile Editor.
Each plugin requires configuration, and that level of configuration varies depending on the data source being connected to. This can include providing login credentials, API keys or defining which objects are imported.
Whether connecting to applications, APIs, or databases, plugins ensure your data is always accessible, up to date, and ready for exploration.
See Plugins and data sources and Relay Agents to learn more.
Exploring your data
SquaredUp gives you multiple ways to visualize, navigate, and inspect the objects and signals in your environment so that you can reveal insights and relationships that may otherwise stay hidden.
Data streams and objects
Data streams deliver a continuous flow of information from your data sources, while objects are the structured entities created from that data. Together, they form a navigable model of your environment, enabling you to:
- Monitor key metrics and health
- Analyze trends over time
- Build a complete view of your operational landscape
See Data streams and Objects to learn more.
Drilldown
Drilldown is the name given to your ability to drill down into objects in SquaredUp. Whenever you navigate from a workspace, to a dashboard, to an object, to a perspective—that's drilldown. It's a simple concept, powered by smart architecture.
Perspectives
Perspectives are a type of dashboard that gets automatically generated whenever you drill down into an object that is being used as a dashboard variable. When you click on one of these objects (whether it’s a server, application, or KPI), the perspective engine finds all the relevant dashboards scattered across your organization and brings them into one view.
See Perspectives to learn more.
Data Explorer
The Data Explorer is your space for experimentation. Functionally, this feature looks and acts identically to the Tile Editor, providing a single place to interact with all your imported objects and data streams
Unlike the Tile Editor however, the Data Explorer sits at the top-level of your workspace, meaning you can create visualizations without having to create a dashboard or edit a tile.
Use the Data Explorer to:
- Sketch out visualizations
- Test and refine queries
- Edit tiles without risk of overwriting the original
See Data Explorer to learn more.
Map
The Map provides a dynamic, interactive model of your entire environment, giving you a clear visual representation of the objects within it and how they relate to one another.
It's composed from everything you create in SquaredUp, bringing your workspaces, dashboards, tiles, and all the objects indexed from your connected data source into a unified view. This creates a fast, effective, and interactive way to grasp the structure of your environment.
Each of your object’s status, health, and connections are displayed in real time, allowing you to immediately understand the dependency chain and how different components interact.
By transforming the otherwise abstract architecture of your systems into an explorable model, the Map allows you to move through your environment as if it were a physical space.
Navigating this space makes it much easier to identify patterns, understand dependencies, and quickly spot areas where issues may be forming; long before they escalate.
See Map to learn more.
Search
Search allows you to instantly locate any object, data stream, or configuration across SquaredUp. With fast, intuitive filtering, you can get to the data you need without digging.
See Search to learn more.