Data tiles

Use data tiles 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

that appears.

Then, select Data

and the tile editor displays, allowing you to configure the data from your data sources.

The tile editor

The tile editor is the interface that lets you retrieve, filter, shape and visualize your data. You use the tile editor whenever you want to add or edit a data tile, or when when using the data explorer to experiment with your data streams.

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

Configuring your data

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

To configure a tile, you work down the tabs of the tile editor to retrieve, filter and shape the data you want and then use the panel on the right-hand side of the page to configure the Visualization, Monitoring and KPI settings.

The steps to adding a data tile can include:

Selecting a data stream
Selecting objects
Configuring data stream parameters
Specifying a timeframe
Shaping data
Formatting data columns

Data stream

The first step to visualizing your data is to specify the data stream you want to use. So logically, when you add a new data tile to a dashboard, you are first presented with the Data Stream tab of the tile editor.

The Data Stream tab displays a list containing all of data streams for your currently indexed data sources.

You can filter using the dropdown lists, and/or use the search to narrow down the list of data streams.

This uses the same operators as the main search, see Search.

For each data stream in the list you will see:

The Name of the data stream. You you can sort data by streams A-Z or Z-A by clicking thiscolumn.
A Description of the data stream.
The Type of object that the data stream is available for (matches).
Featured data streams, indicated by the flame icon
, which contextually include data streams which might be the most important or most useful.
Recently used data streams, indicated by a clock icon
, are floated to the top of the list for easy access.

Cover image — List of data streams showing Featured icons and most recently used floated to the top.

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

Use the Objects tab of the tile editor to specify the objects that you want to display data for. You only need to complete this tab if you selected a Scoped data stream.

In the Filter pane you can optionally select the Data source(s),Types and Collections you want to filter by, to help narrow down the object list.
Optionally, click
Add filter to add properties to the filter list. When you add a filter it adds that property as a column in the object list so you can see the values. You can also do this by clicking the Add column button
at the top right.
Optionally, you can also use the Search objects box to narrow the list of objects further.
This uses the same operators as the main search, see Search.
To select the objects you wish to be in the collection you can either tick the objects, or toggle the Dynamic selection button.
- Fixed selection: Returns the specific objects that you manually pick by ticking them. Objects in a fixed scope never change, except when you edit the collection.
- Dynamic selection: Enabled by selecting the Dynamic selection toggle this returns all the objects that match the criteria specified in the Filter panel and search. When objects that match are added to or removed from SquaredUp, the objects in the selection will change. Dynamically scoped tiles check which objects match the filter whenever they refresh.
Click Next.

Saving a collection

The collection you create on this tab can be saved for use in other tiles in this workspace by clicking Add collection

next to Collection in the Filter panel, which opens the Add collection window with your selected objects pre-populated.

Collections can also be created and saved via the Objects page, accessed via the left-hand menu. See Collections.

Objects selected panel

Clicking the x selected message at the bottom of the list, toggles the Objects selected panel open and closed.

Parameters

Use the Parameters tab of the tile editor to configure your data streams. Not every data stream has parameters to configure (for example, a data stream might simply retrieve a specific set of data), and those that are can vary widely depending on the data stream itself.

For instructions of configuring the parameters for a data stream, refer to the Data streams section for the corresponding plugin.

Timeframe

Use the Timeframe tab to choose the timeframe that a tile displays data for. For example, by default a tile's timeframe is set to the dashboard timeframe but you could instead choose to display data from the last 30 days.

Shaping

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

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-Closed ANDType-Equals-Question).
OR: Any condition can be satisfied (e.g. Status-Equals-Pending ORStatus-Equals-Closed).

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

The Sort section allows you to select a column to be displayed in Ascending or Descending order. While this sets the default sort order, but you can always click on a column heading to sort data in a table on the fly.

Enabling the Top toggle allows you to additionally specify the top n rows of data to display.

Columns

Use the Columns tab of the tile editor to format the columns of the table on the Data tab.

SquaredUp automatically defines the metadata retrieved from data streams so the data is assigned the correct data type, however in some circumstances you may want to override this.

For example, when retrieving data using the Web API plugin, scripting, or custom query data streams (such as Splunk Enterprise plugin), the assigned data type may not be quite correct or as you expect.

Formatting columns

Use the following options to format your columns.

Option	Description
Name	To rename a column, click the current Name value and enter a new one. Columns that can be renamed display the Rename column icon when hovered over.
Type	Select an option from the Type dropdown to change the data type of the column. If any additional options are available to configure, the dropdown is expanded below.
Value	Displays the original value of the column.
Formatted	Displays the formatted value of the column.
Add a copy of this column	Click to duplicate a column. The copied field displays `Copy of [field name]` above its Name.
Remove this column	Click to delete a cloned column.

Additional options

Some data types have advanced settings that can be configured in the options section, which is displayed whenever you change the data Type or by clicking expand

next to the column Name.

Option	Description
Output Format	Enter a custom format to display date values as a string. Any specified output format is supported. For example, `dd/mm/yy`, `dd/mm/yyyy` or `d/M/Y`. By default, dates and times are displayed in your local timezone to ensure the data makes sense to you.
Input Format	Enter the format that corresponds to the inputted date. For example, if your data has values such as `05/27/24 01:44 PM`, then the Input Format should be set to `dd/mm/yy hh:mm aa`. Any input format is supported, however if you have a custom input format that is missing any time zone information, the input is always assumed to be UTC. This field is required if the data string for the column are not ISO-8601 formatted. For example, `2024-09-09T13:52:25.281Z`.
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

Visualizing your data

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).

Monitoring your data

You can enable and create monitors for your data tiles on the Monitoring tab of the tile editor.

These monitors let you watch for changes to your configured data and trigger notifications and status rollups whenever a state, threshold or scripted condition is met.

For detailed information on configuring monitoring, see Monitors.

KPIs

KPIs can publish key metrics within a workspace and also aggregate at a higher level for complete oversight.

Defining, monitoring and evaluating KPIs is a practice followed by virtually every organization. In your organization there may be KPIs such as DORA metrics, Service Level Objectives or Cloud costs. SquaredUp allows you to visualize, monitor, and roll-up these values - giving you complete oversight of your key metrics.

KPIs are enabled and configured on the KPI tab of the tile editor.

For detailed information on configuring KPIs, see KPIs.

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