Data tiles

Data tiles allow you to visualize the data from your data sources as graphs, tables and scalar figures.

To add a new tile to a dashboard, hover over the area you'd like to place it and click the

You can add a title and description for your tile at the top of tile editor.

Configuring a Data tile

The steps for configuring a data tile may vary depending on which data stream you select, however the configuration flow usually remains similar. The steps to adding a data tile can include:

1. Selecting a data stream
2. Selecting objects to scope to
3. Configuring the data stream parameters data stream parameters tip
4. Specifying a timeframe
5. Shaping the data
6. Formatting the data columns

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, Type or Objects.

For each data stream in the list of available data streams you will see:

• Name of the data stream
• Description
• Type - the types of object that the data stream is available for (matches)
• Featured data streams, shown by the flame icon, indicate those that might be the most important and most useful data streams.
• Recently used data streams, showing a clock icon, are floated to the top of the list for easy access.
• Alternatively, you can sort data streams A-Z or Z-A by clicking the Name column.

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

Shaping allows you to perform filtering, grouping and sorting operations on the data you retrieve.

Filtering

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).

Grouping

You can group and aggregate data by column.

For example, for AWS cost data you might configure the following settings to display a table or bar chart of cost per label:

• Group by:label
• Aggregation type: Total
• Aggregation column: Amount

Which columns are available depends on the data stream you chose.

Configuring grouping enables different visualizations to be displayed, such as bar chart and donut. For example, grouping tickets by channel allows 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, the Bucket by dropdown appears. Use this field to control how the time data is grouped, for example by hour, day, month etc.

Aggregation type and column

Use this dropdown to choose how to summarize your data, for example as a count, average or total.
For example, you could do the following:

• When creating a Bar Chart of ticket data you might configure the following settings to show a graph of tickets per day:
  • Group by:Date created
  • Bucketby:Day
  • Aggregation type: Count
• When creating Bar Chart of Azure Resource Group cost you could configure the following settings:
  • Group by:Timestamp
  • Bucketby:Day
  • Aggregation type:Total
  • Aggregate column: Cost

Sorting

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.

Visualization

Visualization settings are configured on the Visualization tab of the right-hand panel in the tile editor.

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 in your dataset.

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:

• Monitoring
• KPIs

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