Working with Dashboards (Consoles)

Console Overview

The Consoles page lists all the activated models. You can mark any model as favorite. You can also sort the models either by Date or Name.

The Consoles page includes a high-level visualization of the metrics collected over the past day for an activated model. These metrics include the number of instances for the model that are:

Healthy
Recoverable Errors
Successful
Failed.

On the consoles list page, instances for the previous 24 hours are represented as bars at the end of each console's row. Active instances (Healthy and Recoverable) are stacked together as one bar and completed instances (Successful and Failed) are stacked as the other. Hover over the desired section of either bars to see the number of instances that bar represents. For detailed information about these instance states, refer to Instance States.

Note:

The active/inactive status and instance bars will always show the state at which the page was first loaded even if you use the browser's refresh button. You must navigate away from this page and come back to see the updated data..

The Consoles page appears as follows:

Figure 4-1 Consoles Page

Click a model’s name to navigate to the Dashboards page of that model.

Understanding Dashboards

The main console shows information about the milestone performance of an integration application. For example, once the model of the application has been created and activated, business owners can identify bottlenecks in the application and track key metrics immediately and in real time.

The default dashboards are also known as Milestone Dashboards as they show metrics based on milestones defined in the model. These dashboards display the aggregate state of the business model based on milestones alone. To see the aggregate state of the model’s indicators, you need to create custom dashboards.

The status area is a collapsible section of the Dashboards page that always displays the last time the model changed to/from active/inactive state. This area also displays the search tool. You can see the model's icon, model description, and the labels for Single and Multiple Instances (that were defined while creating the model).

Searching Instances

The Search field has the same label as that of the Multiple Instance Label of the model. The field where you enter your search string uses the single instance description of the model as the placeholder text. The label of the search tool varies from one model to another.

You can use this tool to search for various instances of the model. When you search for instances either from a milestone dashboard or a custom dashboard, the search result (s) open in a new tab. When you search for instances from the Instance List, the search results appear on the same page.

Only users with the role InsightModelCreator/InsightExecutive/InsightAdmin can search for instances.

Note:

Search is performed only based on the search strings and any of the Filtering Instances that have been applied earlier are ignored.

Note:

Search is performed only on identifier values of instances. For example, if your identifier is a Order Number, you can only search for instances by order number.

The search tool is available at the top right-corner of the screen and appears as follows:

If you want to see all the instances of the model, click View All available in the search tool to navigate to the Instance List. The Instance List opens in a new tab.

When you search for an instance, if the identifier is of type numeric/date, you must enter the search string that exactly matches the identifier. If the identifier is of type string, you can enter a partial string, an automatic wildcard mapping is done and all the instances that contain the partial string entered are retrieved. The supported SQL wildcards are:

% (percentage)
_ (underscore).

Filtering Instances

The Filters allow you to control the data you can see on the dashboard. You can filter the instances by Lifecycle Filters or Indicator Filters or both. The lifecycle filters are uniform across models.

Only users with the role InsightModelCreator/InsightExecutive/InsightAdmin can filter instances.

Note:

The filters work on the set of instances available at the time the page was loaded or when the Refresh Data was clicked. If you click Refresh Data while filters are in use, the page will update to show only the refreshed set of instances that match the existing filters.

The available filters for milestone dashboards, custom dashboards, and Instance List are as given below:

For milestone dashboards, only filtering by lifecycle filters is supported.
For custom dashboards, indicator filtering is also available apart from filtering by lifecycle filters.
For Instance List, indicator filtering is also supported apart from filtering by lifecycle filters.

Note:

The external dashboards do not support filters.

Lifecycle Filters

The milestone dashboards support only lifecycle filters. The available lifecycle filters are listed below:

Start Date — filters for instances started in your chosen time range of either one of the preset ranges or a custom range. The default value is Last 5 Days. The possible values are:
- Last 1 Day- when you select this option all the instances of the model started within last 1 day are displayed
- Last 5 Days - when you select this option, all the instances of the model started within the last 5 days are displayed
- Last 30 Days - when you select this option, all the instances of the model started within the last 30 days are displayed
- Last 90 Days - when you select this option, all the instances of the model started within the last 90 days are displayed
- Custom - when you select this option, you need to enter a time range including the date which includes the from and to values to see the instance started in this range.
- Clear - use this option to reset the selected filters.
End Date — filters for instances ended in your chosen time range of either one of the preset ranges or a custom range. The possible values are:
- Last 1 Day - when you select this option all the instances of the model completed within last 1 day are displayed
- Last 5 Days - when you select this option, all the instances of the model completed within the last 5 days are displayed
- Last 30 Days - when you select this option, all the instances of the model completed within the last 30 days are displayed
- Last 90 Days - when you select this option, all the instances of the model completed within the last 90 days are displayed
- Custom - when you select this option, you need to enter a time range including the date which includes the from and to values to see the instance completed in this range.
- Clear - use this option to reset the selected filters.
Duration — filters for the length of time an instance took to complete from a number of seconds to days. Click this drop-down to define a value. Enter a numerical value in the text box and select the appropriate unit of time. The possible units are:
- Days
- Minutes
- Hours
- Seconds.
Milestones — filters for either instances with particular milestones or for instances that finished with a particular milestone. Click this drop-down to select Any or Last.
- Any - Select this option to filter by any milestone. You can filter by any milestone passed by an instance. When you select this option, you can select specific milestones. You can also select multiple milestones.
- Last - Select this option to filter by the last milestone. When you select this option, you can select specific milestones. You can also select multiple milestones.
  
  Note:
  When you select this option, the dashboards populate the data related to only the last milestone actions.
Status — filters for instances that were in the selected status choice(s) at the time when the data was loaded. The possible values are:
- Healthy - indicates the instances that are active and running and have no errors
- Successful - indicates the instances that have completed
- Recoverable Errors - indicates the instances that are active but have errors
- Failed - indicates the instances that have completed running but with errors and hence are reported as failed
- All - indicates all the instances, which is a combination of all the above statuses.

Note:

Though you filter for failed (faulted) instances, they show up on the Active Instances Dashboard. Because, no terminal/error milestone was mapped to a path through the implementation that detected the failed instance, the instance still appears on the dashboard as active. This is the expected behavior.

Note:

When you change the filters, click Apply to refresh the data without explicitly clicking Refresh Data.

Remember:

Oracle Real-Time Integration Business Insight does not support filtering by NULL string values.

The following screen displays the lifecycle filters.

Figure 4-5 Lifecycle Filters for Milestone Dashboards

Lifecycle and Indicator Filters

Custom dashboards and Instance List also support indicator filters apart from the lifecycle filters. The indicator filters available vary from model to model. Only the indicators that you have marked as filterable appear as filters.

For example, the screen below has only two indicator filters, which implies that only two indicators have been marked as filterable in the model. The following screen displays both the lifecycle filters and indicator filters.

Figure 4-6 Lifecycle and Indicator Filters for Custom Dashboards and Instance List

When you filtering on numeric indicators, a numeric range of values to return. Filtering on text strings requires a case-sensitive exact match. The SQL wildcards % and _ are supported.

Drilling Across Dashboards

The milestone dashboards and custom dashboards support a feature of drill across. When you drill across a dashboard, you can go deeper into the instance details and see specific instances that relate to the dashboard.

Only users with the role InsightModelCreator/InsightExecutive/InsightAdmin can drill across the dashboards.

Note:

The external dashboards do not support drill across.

Remember:

Oracle Real-Time Integration Business Insight does not support drilling across by NULL string values.

To drill across a dashboard:

Navigate to the desired dashboard.
Drill across the dashboard. If the dashboards is:
- Milestone Dashboard - click any bubble on the bubble chart to drill across. When you click the dashboard, the Instance List opens in a new tab. You can observe that not all instances of the model are available in the Instance List page. Only specific instances based on the parameters of the dashboard appear here.
- Passed Milestones Dashboard - drill across is not supported for this dashboard.
- Active Instances Dashboard - right-click any bar on the bar chart to drill across. When you right-click, you see the Instance List button. Click this button to open the Instance List in a new tab. You can observe that not all instances of the model are available in the Instance List. Only specific instances based on the parameters of the dashboard appear here.
- Instance Errors Dashboard- right-click any slice on the pie chart to drill across. When you right-click, you see the Instance List button. Click this button to open the Instance List in a new tab. You can observe that not all instances of the model are available in the Instance List. Only active instances represented by the bar you selected appear here.
- Avg Instance Completion Time Dashboard - right-click any bubble on the bubble chart to drill across. When you right-click, you see the Instance List button. Click this button to open the Instance List in a new tab. You can observe that not all instances of the model are available in the Instance List. Only specific instances based on the parameters of the dashboard appear here.
- Custom Dashboard - right-click any sector/bar/bubble on the dashboard to drill across when the dashboard uses pie/bar/bubble charts respectively. When you right-click, you see the Instance List button. Click this button to open the Instance List in a new tab. You can observe that not all instances of the model are available in the Instance List. Only specific instances based on the parameters of the dashboard appear here.
  
  Note:
  You cannot drill across from a custom dashboard that uses an area chart.

The following screen shows an example of how you can drill across from a milestone dashboard. The milestone dashboard in this example is an Instance Errors Dashboard.

Figure 4-7 Drilling Across from a Milestone Dashboard

The following screen shows an example of how you can drill across from a custom dashboard. The custom dashboard in this example uses a bubble chart.

Figure 4-8 Drilling Across from a Custom Dashboard

The following screens show the list of instances that you see when you drill across from the milestone dashboard shown in Figure 4-7.

Figure 4-9 Drilled Instances from a Milestone Dashboard

Remember:

The list of instances that you see here is not the complete list. For a complete list of instances of a model, see Instance List.

The following screens show the list of instances that you see when you drill across from the custom dashboard shown in Figure 4-8.

Figure 4-10 Drilled Instances from a Custom Dashboard

Milestone Dashboards

After a model is defined and activated, Insight collects metrics on running instances immediately. Within a few moments, you (a user with the role-permission of InsightExecutive) can evaluate the state of the integration application using the default dashboards. There are several major functional areas on the console.

The content of the console can be filtered using the Filters section. This area is collapsed by default. See Filtering Instances.

By default, the console shows activity for the last five days. You can filter by a number of different criteria, including when an instance started or ended, how long the instance took to complete, any milestones passed and which milestones have most recently been passed.

Insight provides default dashboards. The default dashboards are also known as Milestone Dashboards. Milestone dashboards on a console associated with a model give a business owner visibility into details on how a business is performing.

Note:

Only users with the role InsightModelCreator/InsightExecutive/InsightAdmin can view milestone dashboards.

You can set a preference to see either all the milestone dashboards (Passed Milestones, Active Instances, Instance Error, and Avg. Instance Completion Time) or a selected dashboard on the Milestone Dashboards page. See Milestone Dashboard View in Preferences. When the preference is set as Separated, you must select a dashboard that needs to be displayed by default. The selected dashboard remains as the default dashboard to be displayed on the Dashboards page till you select another dashboard or change the preference to Combined. However, when you have set the preference as Separated, you can switch from one dashboard to another by clicking the relevant dashboard’s tile.

The default view of the Milestone Dashboards page is as shown below:

Figure 4-11 View of Milestone Dashboards page when the Preference is set to Combined

Updating the Milestone Dashboard View preference does not impact the Milestone Summary Dashboard. Irrespective of the value you choose for the Milestone Dashboard View preference, the Milestone Summary Dashboard always appears on the Milestone Dashboards page. The following screen shows the preference change.

Figure 4-12 View of Milestone Dashboards page when the Preference is set to Separated

Viewing Dashboard

To view data on the milestone dashboards:

Click the model for which you want to see the dashboards (on the Consoles page).
Expand the Filters area and select the required filters. See Filtering Instances.
Click Apply to apply the filters or Clear All to clear all the selected filters.
Click Refresh Data to see the latest data without changing the filters.

Hover over any of the dashboards to view details about the milestone and execution time. You can also drill across the milestones to view specific instances. See Drilling Across Dashboards.

Note:
Milestone count increase for each retry of a faulted instance. This is because BPEL fault policy tires to commit before every retry.
Click Consoles to go back to the Dashboards page.
After you are done with viewing the dashboards, click View All at the top-right corner of the page to navigate to the Instance List.

Custom Dashboards

You can track metrics, ratios, and trends on the console that are important to the business through custom dashboards. If a model has indicators, you can create custom dashboards to capture the data related to the indicators. As the milestones dashboards capture only data related to the milestones, a custom dashboard helps you to view indicator data along with the milestone data. You can visualize the indicators defined and extracted as the application runs.

You can add as many custom dashboards as you like. Each custom dashboard is represented by a title and an icon (chosen while creating the dashboard).

By default, the custom dashboards show data for instances created during the last five days. You can filter by a number of different criteria, including when an instance started or ended, how long the instance took to complete, and which milestones have most recently been passed.

Custom dashboards allow you to choose the indicators based on which you want to monitor the progress of a process.

To view data on Custom Dashboards:

Click the model for which you want to monitor the performance on the Consoles page.
Click My Custom Dashboards icon.
Expand the Filters area and select the required filters.
Click Apply to apply the filters or Clear All to clear all the selected filters.

You can see the data visually in the form of a chart that was selected for the dashboard.
Click Refresh Data each time you change the filters to view the refreshed model data on the dashboard.

Figure 4-13 Custom Dashboard

You can drill across the dashboard to view specific instances. See Drilling Across Dashboards.

Chart Types

The available chart types for custom dashboards are:

Pie Chart
Bar Chart
Bubble Chart
Area Chart.

For more information, see Types of Charts in Oracle Fusion Middleware Oracle Real-Time Integration Business Insight Concepts.

Creating Custom Dashboards

You can also create custom dashboards for models that have indicators defined. Models need indicators to be defined because the visualization charts in the custom dashboard use the dimensions or measures to be represented in the chart.

Only users with the role InsightModelCreator/InsightExecutive/InsightAdmin can create custom dashboards.

To create custom dashboards:

Click the model for which you want to monitor the progress on the Consoles page.
Ensure that the model has indicators defined. If not, create/define indicators.
Click My Custom Dashboards icon.
Click Create Dashboard.

The Create Dashboard dialog opens.

Figure 4-14 Create Dashboard Dialog
Enter a suitable Title for the dashboard.
Choose an appropriate icon.
Choose a Visualization, the chart through which the data is visualized. Based on the type of the chart you choose, the parameters vary. The charts available are listed below:
- Pie Chart
  - Slice Size - select the values to be represented by the slice size. This is a mandatory field.
    - Measure - select the measure for the slice size. This is a mandatory field.
    - Aggregating Function - select the aggregating function for the slice size. This is a mandatory field.
  - Grouping - select the value based on which the grouping needs to be done. This is a mandatory field.
    
    Figure 4-15 Create Dashboard — Pie Chart
  - Ignore empty value - select this check box if you want to ignore the data for which the value of this field is empty. Such data will not be displayed on this dashboard.
- Bar Chart
  - Y Axis - select the values to be represented on the Y Axis.
    - Measure - select the appropriate measure. This is a mandatory field.
    - Aggregating Function - select the appropriate aggregating function. This is a mandatory field.
  - X Axis - select the values to be represented on the X Axis. It is typically a dimension.
  - Ignore empty value - select this check box if you want to ignore the data for which the value of this field is empty. Such data will not be displayed on this dashboard.
  - Grouping - select the value based on which the grouping needs to be done. This is an optional field.
    
    Figure 4-16 Create Dashboard — Bar Chart
  - Ignore empty value - select this check box if you want to ignore the data for which the value of this field is empty. Such data will not be displayed on this dashboard.
- Bubble Chart
  - X Axis - select the values to be represented on the X Axis.
    - Measure - select the appropriate measure. This is a mandatory field.
    - Aggregating Function - select the appropriate aggregating function. This is a mandatory field.
  - Y Axis - select the values to be represented on the Y Axis.
    - Measure - select the appropriate measure. This is a mandatory field.
    - Aggregating Function - select the appropriate aggregating function. This is a mandatory field.
  - Bubble Size - select the values to be used to determine the bubble size.
    - Measure - select the appropriate measure. This is a mandatory field.
    - Aggregating Function - select the appropriate aggregating function. This is a mandatory field.
  - Grouping - select the value based on which the grouping needs to be done. This is a mandatory field.
    
    Figure 4-17 Create Dashboard — Bubble Chart
  - Ignore empty value - select this check box if you want to ignore the data for which the value of this field is empty. Such data will not be displayed on this dashboard.
- Area Chart
  - Y Axis - select the values to be represented on the Y Axis.
    - Measure - select the appropriate measure. This is a mandatory field.
    - Aggregating Function - select the appropriate aggregating function. This is a mandatory field.
  - X Axis - select the value to be represented on the X Axis. This is a mandatory field.
    
    Figure 4-18 Create Dashboard — Area Chart
  - Ignore empty value - select this check box if you want to ignore the data for which the value of this field is empty. Such data will not be displayed on this dashboard.
Select appropriate values for each of the fields in Create Dashboard dialog.
Click Ok to create the dashboard.

Editing Custom Dashboards

Only users with the role InsightModelCreator/InsightExecutive/InsightAdmin can edit/update custom dashboards.

When you try to edit a dashboard, all the fields are populated with the current values. You can change any of the fields if required.

To edit a custom dashboard:

Click the model for which you want to monitor the performance on the Consoles page.
Click My Custom Dashboards icon.
Click the Edit icon (the pencil icon) on the Custom Dashboard tile.

The Create Dashboard dialog opens.
Make the required changes and click Ok. Click Cancel to discard your changes.

You can see the changes you have made.
Click the Delete icon on the Custom Dashboard tile if you want to delete the custom dashboard for any reason.

Importing Dashboards

You can import dashboards from other applications into the Oracle Real-Time integration Business Insight application. You can import custom dashboards from one installation of Oracle Real-time Integration Business Insight into another.

Only users with the role InsightModelCreator/InsightAdmin can import custom dashboards. Though a user with the role InsightExecutive can view and edit dashboards, this user is not permitted to import dashboards.

Note:

You can import dashboards only into an activated model.

To import dashboards:

Click the model for which you want to monitor the progress on the Consoles page.
Click My Custom Dashboards icon.
Click Import Dashboards.

The Import Dashboard dialog opens.

Figure 4-19 Import Dashboard Dialog
Click Browse and select the archive file of the dashboard to import.

The model name is the name of the model for which you are viewing the dashboard.
Click Import Dashboards.

Note:
Existing dashboards are not imported. The existing dashboards appear as skipped dashboards. The imported dashboards appear on the Dashboards page sorted by date.

Note:

Insight does not copy/import instances when you import dashboards. To copy the instances of the dashboards, you must clean up the Data Objects in Oracle Business Activity Monitoring Composer. See Cleaning BAM Data Objects and Projects in Oracle Fusion Middleware Oracle Real-Time Integration Business Insight Administrator's Guide.

External Dashboards

Occasionally, detailed dashboards beyond the capabilities of custom dashboards are needed to track business progress. If this is the case, you can create dashboards using the Oracle Business Activity Monitoring (BAM) Composer, and add the dashboards as an external dashboard.

The dashboards created in BAM must be added to the project that is provisioned in BAM by Oracle Real-time Integration Business Insight when the model is activated.

Note:

External dashboards are available only if that option is set in the Preferences.

There are no filters for external dashboards. They provide flexibility in choosing measures and dimensions for the charts compared to the custom dashboards which use a fixed set of templates which largely have only indicators as measures and dimensions. The dashboards have a link to open the dashboard in a new tab. This link takes you to the BAM dashboard, which opens in a new tab. The dashboard in BAM has tools that allow you to change dimensions, set runtime filters and active data properties (if allowed by the BAM source views), and choose parameters if any are involved. If parameters are used, they appear in a collapsible pane on the right side of the dashboard.

If any of the external dashboards have been added to the Oracle Real-Time Integration Business Insight application, you can see them here. If there are any BAM dashboards available in the model's BAM project and not yet added to Insight, you can add them. If you do not see any dashboards in External Dashboards, you can add external dashboards by using the Add Dashboard button.

Note:

Only users with the role InsightModelCreator/InsightExecutive/InsightAdmin can add/integrate external dashboards.

Figure 4-20 External Dashboard

Creating an External Dashboard

To add an external dashboard in Insight, it must be created in BAM Composer first. Each Insight business model has exactly one BAM project associated with it. The display name of that BAM project is Insight-<Model Name>. All the external dashboards related to a particular business model must be created in the corresponding BAM project. These dashboards can be created using either the top down or the bottom up approach supported by BAM.

The business query for the view(s) in a dashboard makes use of the data object that is called

<Model-Name>
metrics view

and is already added to the project. Although, other data objects also work, this data object contains all the relevant columns that you could be interested in. Thus, you have the flexibility to display the information as desired.

Pick the required columns.

Typically, these would be the columns for the various indicators for the model. The column display names are the same as the names of the indicators.
Click Add/Edit Filter. Create Filters for these business queries as is the case with any BAM business queries.

These filters can make use of one or more parameters that are already present in this project.

Figure 4-21 Creating External Dashboards in Oracle BAM Composer
If you need a similar drill across experience as is there for the milestone dashboards and custom dashboards, you can configure the business views in the external dashboard on similar lines with the Instance List being the target page to display.
Leave the title of the dashboard as blank in BAM Composer if you do not want to see the BAM title of the dashboard in Insight and want only the title entered for the dashboard in the Insight Add Dashboard dialog.
Decide the look and feel and include/exclude the various features supported by BAM in dashboards.

Adding an External Dashboard

If the model’s BAM project does not have any dashboards that can be added to Insight, you see an error message at the top of the screen. The error message like:

No external dashboards available for addition

To add an external dashboard:

Click Add Dashboard
The Add Dashboard dialog opens.
Click Browse and select the dashboard you want to add.

Note:
Before you add the external dashboards, you must create them in Oracle Business Activity Monitoring Composer.
Click OK
The external dashboard displays data and appears at the bottom of the Dashboards page as a new tile.

Instance List

The Instance List shows the information including the start date, the end date, the last milestone passed, and the values of various indicators, collected by Insight and associated with that instance. The Instance List provides you with the ability to search for one or more instances by the unique identifier.

The search tool at the top lets you search for case-insensitive partial matches of unique identifiers. You can also filter by various life-cycle filters or by filterable indicators to narrow or expand your results. For more information see Searching Instances and Filtering Instances.

Users with appropriate role privileges can inspect lists of instances that match search criteria from the Instance List. From this list, you can drill across into instances and inspect detailed metadata (e.g., milestone audit, etc.).

You can navigate to the Instance List using the View All link on the dashboards page.

You can navigate to the Instance List in any of the following ways:

Click View All link on the Dashboards page
Drill across from most the of the milestone dashboards or any of the custom visualization views with a right-click. In this case, only the list of instances specific to the dashboard appear on this page. See Drilling Across Dashboards.
Drill across any bubble of the Milestone Summary Dashboard with a click. In this case, only the list of instances specific to the dashboard appear.

Figure 4-22 Instance List

A maximum of 15 rows appear on a page. Scroll down to the end of the page to see the navigational arrows that allow you navigate to further pages.

Click any of the row headers to sort the Instance List by that header.

Instance Details Page

The basic use of the instance details page is to give a chronological detailed record of the passage of milestones of any particular instance that you wish to view.

A user looking for failed instances, or healthy instances or any other filtered list of instances on the Instance List may as a consequence want to delve into each of these instances to investigate the causes for the same. The last column for each instance on the Instance List contains a side arrow to drill down into the instance details page, which shows details for that particular instance in the form of time line depicting which milestones were hit and when. You can also click the Identifier.

The instance details page also shows a list of indicators grouped according to the milestone with which they are associated, and the values of these indicators.

Click any instance on the Instance List to navigate to the Instance Details Page.

When instance details page opens, by default, all milestones passed are shown in the timeline, with a master-details list below it (where headers are milestones and on expansion indicators are shown associated with that milestone) with all the headers collapsed. If you click anywhere outside the timeline item, the selected milestone gets deselected and the default state of the master-detail list is restored.

Click Expand All on the top-right corner of the page to expand all the milestones.

Figure 4-23 Instance Details Page

Note:

If you think the instance has any problems, you can send an e-mail with the flowtrace link to the Support team using the Report A Problem link either at the milestone level or the instance level. When you click this link, an e-mail editor opens with a link to the associated flowtrace information. You can also add other details that you want to report to the Support team.