Data Tiles
On the dashboard, hover where you'd like to place a visualization, and click the + that appears. Click on the Data icon, the tile editor will appear.
The tile editor allows you to configure the data from your data sources and display it in any way you wish. Steps may vary depending on which data stream you select. You can add a title and description for your tile at the top of tile editor.
Data stream
The first step is to select which data stream you want to use. You will see a list of all available data streams for your indexed data sources. If you need to index a new data source, select the + icon next to Data Source filter.
You can search for data streams at the top, or filter data streams by Data Source, Data Stream Type or Object Scope.
For each data stream in the list of available data streams you will see:
- Name of the data stream
- Data source
- Data stream type (Scoped or Global)
- Object scope
- Whether the data stream is configurable – configurable data streams are represented by a cog icon. User-configured data streams are represented by a user icon.
Select the data stream that you want to use and then click Next.
Help with configuring data streams specific to your data source can be found in each specific data source article:
List of documentation for data source plugins available
Objects
The Objects tab of the tile editor allows you to scope the data stream to show particular objects. This will only need to be completed if you selected a Scoped data stream in the previous step. A selection of objects is also called a scope. See Objects for more information about SquaredUp objects.
Your scope can be saved for use in other tiles in this workspace using the Save as button. Saved scopes will appear, and can be edited, from Scopes on the left-hand menu.
You will see a list of all available objects for the selected data stream.
You can search for objects at the top, or filter objects by Data Source or Type. To narrow results down further, additional filters can be used by selecting Add Filter.
For each object in the list of available objects you will see:
- Name of the object
- Data source
- Type
There are two types of scopes:
- Fixed scopes contain specific objects that you have manually picked. The objects in a fixed scope never change, except when you manually edit the scope.
- Dynamic scopes contain objects that match criteria defined by you. When objects that match those criteria get added to or removed from SquaredUp the number of objects in the scope can change. Tiles that use a dynamic scope will check which objects match the criteria every time they refresh.
When you are editing a tile, a panel shows the objects selected (as they may be spread across several pages of selectable objects). If you close this panel you can reopen it by clicking the x objects selected message by the Next button.
Once you have finished selecting objects, click Next.
Query
The Query tab of the tile editor will only need to be completed if you selected a Configurable data stream. Complete each field to configure the data stream how you wish.
Query fields will vary depending on which configurable data stream you selected.
Click Next.
Timeframe
Select a timeframe for the tile. By default, the timeframe is set to the dashboard timeframe.
Shaping
Data can be filtered according to whether data in a column meets or does not meet specified text or numerical value conditions. Depending on the data you are filtering, available options include: Equals, Not equals, Contains, Doesn't contain, Less than, Greater than, Before now, After now, Is empty, Is not empty.
Dates can be filtered by Before now or After now (e.g. to show overdue orders). Text matching is case sensitive.
You are able to add multiple filter conditions. Available options are:
- AND – all conditions must be satisfied (e.g.
Status-Equals-ClosedANDType-Equals-Question). - OR – any condition can be satisfied (e.g.
Status-Equals-PendingORStatus-Equals-Closed).
You can group and aggregate data by column.
For example, for AWS cost data you might Group bylabel, choose Aggregation typeTotal with Aggregation columnAmount, to show a table or bar chart of cost per label.
Which columns are available depends on the data stream you chose.
Configuring grouping will enable different visualizations to be displayed, such as bar chart and donut. For example, grouping tickets by channel will allow you to show a donut of how many tickets were logged by email vs web form.
Bucket by
If you group by a time column, and further grouping is possible, then the Bucket by dropdown will appear, which allows you to control how the time data is grouped, for example by hour, day, month etc.
Aggregation type and column
Using this dropdown you can choose how to summarize your data, for example as a count, average or total.
For example, for a Bar Chart of ticket data you might Group by Date created, choose Bucket byDay with Aggregation type Count, to show a line graph of tickets per day. Or for a Bar Chart of Azure Resource Group cost you might Group byTimestamp, Bucket byDay, Aggregation typeTotal and Aggregate columnCost.
Data can be sorted by column in ascending or descending order. This sets the default sort order, but users can click on a column heading to sort data in a table on the fly.
Ticking Top and typing a number will show the top n rows of data.
Columns
The Columns tab of the editor allows you to format the columns of the Data table you retrieve from data streams.
Typically, SquaredUp automatically defines the metadata retrieved from-built-in data streams so that the received data is assigned the correct data type, enabling visualizations to be configured out of the box.
However, in some circumstances (such as when retrieving data using the Web API plugin, scripting, or using custom query data streams such as Splunk Enterprise plugin) you may want to override the data type or the data type may not be quite correct - in which case this tab allows you to manually select a different data type from the Type dropdown.
Additionally, this tab also allows you to rename and copy the data columns you receive.
The table contains each data column received by the data stream, and is used to format the following:
Name:
The column name. This can be overwritten by clicking the cell and entering a new value.
Type:
The data type of a column. This can be overwritten by selecting a new value from the dropdown. Some data types have advanced settings that can be configured in the Options section, displayed by clicking the expand button next to the Name, see Options.
Value:
Displays the original value of the column.
Formatted:
Displays the formatted value of the column.
Add a copy of this column (button):
Click to duplicate the column. The copied field displays Copy of [field name] above its Name.
Remove this column (button):
Click to delete a copied column.
Some data types have additional formatting that can be applied to a column in the Options section, displayed by clicking the expand button next to the corresponding Name.
The following options are available:
Format:
Enter a custom date format.
Currency:
Select the currency to display the value in. This does not convert the currency value.
Decimal Places:
Formats the number of decimal places for a supported data type. Enter a value between 0 and 20.
Link Text:
Specify the text of the URL links in the column.
Format as duration:
Toggle between displaying the time value in minutes and seconds or seconds.
Map Values to States:
Define the values that trigger states. Select a value for each of the corresponding dropdowns:
- Success
- Warning
- Error
- Unknown
Visualization
Select the visualization for your tile. Which visualizations are offered to you depends on the data available, for example Line Graph will only be offered if there is time series data.
For detailed information on configuring each visualization type, see Visualization settings.
These steps describe the simple tile editor. Advanced users might like to try the SQL Analytics editor see SQL Analytics (Beta).
You can also configure Monitoring and KPIs in the tile configuration: