Plugins and data sources
Usage limits for data sources are determined by your plan
About plugins
Plugins are the mechanism which connect SquaredUp to your data sources. There are lots of plugins available with new ones being made available regularly, see SquaredUp: Plugins.
Plugins are used to add new data sources from Data sources on the left-hand menu, which gives you access to their corresponding Data Streams and Objects when creating Dashboards.
While configuration steps vary between plugins, many data sources require credentials like an API key, access token or other authentication methods.
On-prem plugins allow you to connect to APIs hosted on-prem.
If there isn't a plugin available for your data source, then you can use the Web API plugin to connect to any HTTP API that returns JSON. Alternatively, you can build and customize your own plugin.
Contact our support team in-app or via SquaredUp Support
List of documentation for data source plugins available
Adding a new data source
To add a data source click on the + next to Data Sources on the left-hand menu in SquaredUp. Search for the data source and click on it to open the Configure data source page.
You can also add a data source by clicking Add data source on the Settings > Data Sources page, but pre-built dashboards are not added when using this method.
You must then configure the parameters for your data source. Each data source may have slightly different fields to fill out. See the corresponding data source documentation for detailed information.
The first time you are adding the data source to a workspace, a window showing the progress of the data source indexing displays.
You can click Run in background to close this window but you will still have to wait for the indexing to complete before the data source becomes usable.
Once the process completes, you can do the following if the data source was added successfully:
- If you installed sample dashboards, click Explore Dashboards to be taken to the first sample dashboard in the list.
- If you did not install sample dashboards, click Add Dashboard to create a new dashboard.
- Click Close to go to the connected data source.
If the data source was not successfully installed, click Close to go to the failed data source.
What happens when I add a data source?
Most data sources will add the following to SquaredUp:
Data streams standardize data from all the different shapes and formats your tools use into a straightforward tabular format.
While creating a tile you can tweak data streams by grouping or aggregating specific columns.
Depending on the kind of data, SquaredUp will automatically suggest how to visualize the result, for example as a table or line graph.
Data streams can be either global or scoped:
- Global data streams are unscoped and return information of a general nature (e.g. "Get the current number of unused hosts").
- A scoped data stream gets information relevant to the specific set objects supplied in the tile scope (e.g. "Get the current session count for these hosts").
What are types?
Every object in SquaredUp has a type. Types are usually indexed when you add a data source as they often bring new types of objects (like domain controllers, tickets, projects, alerts, incidents, etc.).
You can also add custom types if you've indexed data from a custom data source to give those new objects nice looking types with an icon and the singular and plural forms of the type.
Many data sources will also add some default sample dashboards to help you get started.
- To read more about the dashboards installed with data sources take a look at the Dashboard Gallery.
- You can edit these dashboards, as well as create your own new dashboards. See Dashboards
Adding data sources across workspaces
While there are reasons to add multiple instances of the same data source in your workspace, there's no need to recreate an exact copy of a data source in each of the workspaces you want to use it.
So long as no access restrictions have been added to a data source, you can quickly add a data source that's been configured in one workspace to another by simply selecting it from the Data sources in my organization section of the Add a data source page.
Adding multiple data source instances
It's possible to add multiple instances of the same data source in SquaredUp, and there are many use cases where this may be a benefit.
For example, you can add multiple instances of the AzureDevops plugin if you want to connect to both your production and development environments.
The only condition for adding multiple instances of a data source is that each data source instance must be configured with a unique Display Name.
Data source troubleshooting
Sometimes data source indexing fails, perhaps due to permissions or changes in the source system. A red indicator next to Settings at the bottom of SquaredUp will let you know if a data source has failed. On the Settings page any data sources with errors are shown with a red indicator.
More info will expand to show you more of the message about the issue.
- Help article will take you to the data source article.
- Contact Support will open the Submit a support ticket page.