1. Working with Oracle Management Cloud
  2. Work with Dashboards

5 Work with Dashboards

A dashboard is a collection of widgets on a single page, which provides quick access to multiple data analyses. You can access the Dashboards page by clicking the Dashboards tile on the Oracle Management Cloud home page or in the Management Cloud navigation menu.

Dashboards provide a quick insight into the health and performance of your IT infrastructure and applications and help identify outliers and take corrective action. With either the OMC Administrator or User role, you can create custom dashboards and use them to save and access the information specific to your needs, analyze the data by various dimensions, and share the dashboard with other users. For example, you can create an Application Dashboard, which will enable you to gather data from all tiers of an application and view information such as infrastructure metrics, log data, and business metrics on a single page.

Other than creating custom dashboards, you can also use the out-of-the-box dashboards provided on the Dashboards page. To view and use out-of-the-box dashboards, click the Filter by field on the Dashboards page and select Oracle from the drop-down list.

You can use dashboards to gather and view different types of data from various sources. You can use the following types of widgets to build a dashboard:

  • Data Explorer widgets, which you can create on the Data Explorer page or you can use the out-of-the-box widgets provided on the Data Explorer page.

  • Log Explorer widgets, which you can create on the Log Explorer page or you can use the out-of-the-box widgets provided on the Log Explorer page. You can use these widgets only if you’ve subscribed to Oracle Log Analytics. For information on Oracle Log Analytics out-of-the-box widgets, see Use Out-of-the-Box Widgets in Using Oracle Log Analytics.

  • Text/HTML widgets, which you can add to customize your dashboard by adding text or HTML codes. You can add these widgets to the dashboard on the Dashboards page.

The following are the different types of dashboards:

  • Analytics Dashboards: You can search and explore real-time and historical IT operational data and build these dashboards to view and analyze information. These dashboards are especially useful if you’re troubleshooting an issue, for example, if you want to view the attributes specific to an entity that’s experiencing frequent unplanned downtime. You can also conduct a time-series analysis and view the trend of resource utilization of your database and middleware entities, identify the top database and middleware entities by a specific attribute, and so on.

    The following is an example of an analytics dashboard, with data collected over a period of 30 days:
    Description of analytics-dashboard.png follows
    Description of the illustration analytics-dashboard.png

  • Monitoring Dashboards: You can explore real-time data and build these dashboards to monitor the health and performance of your infrastructure or application. To build a monitoring dashboard, you can use Data Explorer to build widgets with Oracle Application Performance Monitoring summary metrics or the metrics collected by Oracle Infrastructure Monitoring. You can also add log widgets created using Log Explorer. For example, you can build a dashboard to view the status of your managed entities, number of open alerts, log trends of all entities in your application, and so on. You can also monitor by exception and create scatter charts to show performance and resource outliers or correlate performance and load metrics.

    The following is an example of a monitoring dashboard:
    Description of monitoring-dashboard.png follows
    Description of the illustration monitoring-dashboard.png

  • Executive Dashboards: You can create these dashboards to provide high-level infrastructure or business information to senior executives in your organization.

    The following is an example of an executive dashboard:
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    Description of the illustration executive-dashboard.png

  • Reporting Dashboards: You can create daily, weekly, and monthly reports on these dashboards and share them with various stakeholders.

    The following is an example of a reporting dashboard:
    Description of reporting-dashboard.png follows
    Description of the illustration reporting-dashboard.png

Topics:

Create Custom Dashboards

You can create custom dashboards on the Dashboards page by adding out-of-the-box widgets or the custom widgets you’ve created. You can also create a duplicate of one of the available dashboards and customize it to meet your requirements.

  1. Select Dashboards in the Management Cloud navigation menu.
  2. On the Dashboards page, click Create.
  3. In the Create Dashboard dialog box, select Dashboard (a single dashboard).
  4. Specify the name of the dashboard and optionally, a description, and click Create.
  5. On the new dashboard page, click Edit to add widgets.
    The Add Widget pane is displayed.
  6. Click a widget in the Add Widget pane to add it to the dashboard.
    After you’ve added a widget, you can click the Content Settings (content settings) icon on the widget to perform various actions such as altering the size or placement of the widget, hiding or adding the title, linking the title of the widget to an Oracle Management Cloud page or dashboard, and removing the widget.
  7. Optionally, you can click Text/HTML Widget at the bottom of the Add Widget pane to customize your dashboard by adding a text widget with a header, your company logo, or an HTML or email link.
  8. Click Done Editing to save the new dashboard.
    After you click Done Editing, the dashboard is in View mode. At a later time, if you want to make changes to the contents of your dashboard, click Edit to go to the Edit mode.
After you’ve created a dashboard, you can use the following options on the Dashboards page to perform other tasks:
  • Click the Open in Data Explorer (open in data explorer) icon on a widget to open the widget in Data Explorer and make changes. If you want to make changes to a widget created by another user or to an out-of-the-box widget, you can click the Save As option in Data Explorer to create a copy of the widget and make changes to meet your requirements. Note that the copy of the widget isn't automatically added to the dashboard and you'll have to edit the dashboard and add it.

  • Click the Favorite the dashboard (set as favorite) icon next to the title of the dashboard. The dashboard is then displayed in the Dashboards menu and is easier to access.

  • Click Filter to enable expression-based filtering by Entity Type, Entity Status, and Tags.

  • Click the Auto-refresh drop-down list to set a time for auto-refresh or disable it.

  • Click More to print the dashboard, set the dashboard as your home page, share the dashboard with other users, duplicate the dashboard, set global entity and time selector options, and delete the dashboard.

    Dashboard Collaboration Options

    As mentioned above, after creating a dashboard, you can click More > Share with Others (view-only) > On to allow all the users in the same tenant to view your dashboard. In addition, you can use REST API to perform advanced dashboard collaboration tasks such as sharing your dashboard with selected users in the same tenant and allowing them to edit the dashboard. For information on REST API for dashboard collaboration, see Working with Dashboards in Oracle Management Cloud Common REST API.

    Note that if you have the OMC Administrator role, you can view and edit dashboards created by other users in the same tenant.

Create Dashboard Sets

On the Dashboards page, you can also create a Dashboard Set, which includes multiple logically related dashboards.

Dashboard sets provide neatly categorized data with each dashboard displayed in a tab. This ensures that related information is available on one page and a dashboard set is easy to navigate through. For example, an application administrator can create a dashboard set, which includes a dashboard that provides details regarding the application’s performance metrics, another dashboard for end-user performance metrics, and a third dashboard for underlying infrastructure metrics. Each of these dashboards can be accessed easily using the tabs in the dashboard set and the application administrator can obtain all the application-related information, which is categorized by tier, on one page.

The following is an example of a dashboard set with two dashboards.
Description of dashboard-set.png follows
Description of the illustration dashboard-set.png

To create a dashboard set:

  1. Navigate to the Dashboards page and click Create.
  2. In the Create Dashboard dialog box, select Dashboard Set (multiple dashboards on tabs).
  3. Specify the name of the dashboard and optionally, a description, and click Create.
  4. On the new dashboard set page, you can:

    • Click one of the dashboards displayed on the page to add it to the dashboard set.

    • Click Create to create a custom dashboard and add it to the dashboard set.

  5. Click Add dashboard to the left of the previously added dashboard to add another dashboard.
  6. Click Done Editing to save the new dashboard set.
    After you click Done Editing, the dashboard set is in View mode. At a later time, if you want to make changes to the contents of your dashboard set, click Edit to go to the Edit mode.

As in the case of dashboards, after you've created the dashboard set, the Favorite the dashboard and the Auto-refresh options are available.

You can also click More to print the dashboard set, set the dashboard set as your home page, share the dashboard set with other users, duplicate the dashboard set, change global entity and time selector options, and delete the dashboard set.

Set Global Context for a Dashboard

You can view the information displayed on a dashboard within a global entity or time context.


Description of global-context-options.png follows
Description of the illustration global-context-options.png

Set Global Entity Context

The Global Entity Selector allows you to view the information displayed on the dashboard within a selected entity context.

When you navigate to a dashboard for the first time, it's likely that the information in the dashboard is within a previously selected context.

You can select an entity or composite entity in the Global Entity Selector to filter and display the information related to the selected entity, or change a previously selected entity. When you select an entity in the Global Entity Selector, the information displayed remains within the context of the selected entity even when you navigate away from the dashboard to other dashboards or Oracle Management Cloud pages. You can opt to disable the context of the selected entity by clicking More on the dashboard and selecting Entity Selector > Off (Use entities defined in widget).

Note:

The On (Local - not share between pages) option is currently disabled and will be removed from the Entity Selector options in a future release.

If you're the author of a dashboard, you can select an entity context and share the dashboard with other users by clicking More > Share with Others (view-only). The other users will then view the dashboard within the context you've set, if they don't have a previously selected entity context when they open the dashboard.

Set Global Time Context

The Global Time Selector allows you to view the information displayed on all the dashboards within a selected time context. To set a time context and view the information within a specific time frame, click the Global Time Selector drop-down list and select a time frame.
Description of global-time-selector.png follows
Description of the illustration global-time-selector.png

When you select a time frame, the information remains within the context of the selected time frame even when you navigate away from the dashboard to other dashboards or Oracle Management Cloud pages. You can opt to disable the context of the selected time frame by clicking More on the dashboard and selecting Time Selector > Off (Use time range defined in widget).

Note:

The On (Local - not share between pages) option is currently disabled and will be removed from the Time Selector options in a future release.

Set Global Context for a Dashboard Set

As in the case of dashboards, you can view the information displayed in a dashboard set within a global entity or time context.

The Global Entity Selector allows you to view the information displayed on all the dashboards in a dashboard set within a selected entity context.

If you navigate to a dashboard set for the first time, it's likely that the information in the dashboard set is within a previously selected context. You can select an entity or composite entity in the Global Entity Selector to filter and display the information related to the selected entity, or change a previously selected entity. If you're the author of a dashboard set, you can select an entity context and share the dashboard set with other users. The other users will then view the dashboard set within the context you've set, if they don't have a previously selected entity context when they open the dashboard set.

The Global Time Selector allows you to view the information displayed on all the dashboards in a dashboard set within a selected time context.

You can opt to disable the global entity and time context by clicking More in the dashboard set and selecting Global Entity & Time Selector > Off.