Data streams

Data streams standardize data from the different shapes and formats your tools use, and return it in a simple table structure. This gives you a consistent starting point, regardless of the source system.

Each plugin includes its own set of data streams. When editing a tile or exploring data, the data stream you choose acts as the entry point to the objects and records within that data source.

Types of data streams

When selecting a data stream to fetch data from, there are several types you'll encounter.

Global

Global streams return general information and are not tied to specific objects. Therefore, the Objects tab in the Tile Editor is disabled when selecting this type.

For example, the Azure Sentinel Alerts data stream returns a list containing details of all of your Microsoft Sentinel alerts, without you having to scope to any specific alert objects.

Scoped

Scoped data streams allow you to specify which objects or collections to pull data from via the Objects tab of the tile editor.

For example, the Azure Alerts data stream lets you choose the specific Hosts or Resource Groups to return data for.

Deprecated / Hidden

These additional types are data streams can be displayed / hidden via selecting Filter

• Deprecated: These are marked as deprecated by the plugin author, likely removed in a future release. For these, you might also see a reason which is the bit in bold.
• Hidden: Hidden streams are marked as hidden by plugin author, typically because they are used internally by a plugin and not intended for use directly.

Configuration types

Similarly, data streams are also differentiated by their configuration type, with some simply returning data once selected and others requiring / allowing additional configuration.

Pre-configured

Pre-configured data streams work "out of the box" and do not require any additional configuration. These simply fire a "pre-configured" query to the data source and will always return the a dataset that conforms to the same parameters.

As such, the Parameters tab of the Tile Editor is disabled for these data streams.

Configurable

Some data streams require / allow you to configure additional settings via the Parameters tab of the tile editor.

These parameters can range from simple filter options, to allowing you to enter a bespoke query corresponding to the data source, to configuring an entire Web API request.

These streams can be useful for improving tile performance as they can allow you to limit the dateset returned to SquaredUp through your filter / query, rather than returning the entire dataset and then performing filtering in the app.

Custom (Advanced)

You can also write your own custom data streams (or edit a data stream created from a configurable data stream) see Custom Data Streams.

Using data streams

Whether editing a tile or exploring data, visualizing your data always begins on the Data stream tab of the tile editor.

Many data streams related to each other as pre-configurations of an encompassing data stream.

For example, the Workflow Runs / In Progress Worklows data stream is a pre-configuration of the Workflow Runs data stream, where the Status parameter has automatically been pre-selected.

To reflect this, pre-configured data streams follow the naming convention of <Primary data stream> / <pre-configuration>.

Select objects

If a data stream is scoped, after selecting it you can select which objects or collection to fetch data from on the Objects tab.

You change optionally format the data type for each of the columns in the data data on the Columns tab. This is useful if you expected a value to be returned as a number but it has a Type of String, or if you need to specify a custom date format.

The Shaping tab of the tile editor lets you filter, group and sort the data from your data streams.

For detailed instructions on using the tile editor to configure data see Data Tiles.

Configure parameters

If the data stream is configurable, you can then configure any optional / mandatory settings on the Parameters tab.

Depending on the data stream this configuration can be mandatory (such as when specifying a search query) or it could be optional (such as choosing whether to return top n results).

For help with configuring the data streams specific to your data source, refer to the corresponding data source article:

List of all data source articles for SquaredUp authored plugins

Visualize data

For detailed instructions on creating visualizations, see Visualization Settings.

Was this article helpful?