Tailoring Dashboards with Dashboard Filters

A significant concern for users is the time taken to manage either a single dashboard or multiple dashboards with the same widgets. For example, a user may create a dashboard to monitor a specific service or network performance. Additionally, they may want to monitor different services or geographic regions using the same dashboard setup (widgets and settings).

To do this, the user has two options: duplicate the dashboard and update all widget configurations to match what they want to monitor, or update the dashboard itself every time they want to switch services or geographic regions. However, this approach is not scalable and manageable when dealing with a large number of dashboards.

Dashboard Filters solves this issue by allowing you to apply a single set of filters to a dashboard. This feature enables you to monitor multiple services, various geographic locations, and users on dashboards without adjusting individual widget filters. As a result, this feature saves time and provides a more efficient way of monitoring your data with different views.

Adding a New Filter

To add a new filter:

Click on the Filter button and select the Add filters option.

When choosing tests and agents from their respective drop-downs, all tests and agents are shown, providing more flexibility for configuration. For example, if your widgets were originally configured to a subset of HTTP tests, you can use dashboard filters to change the HTTP tests that are shown in those widgets to other HTTP Tests. You can also use the dashboard filters to narrow down the values already configured through the widgets.
For the Tests and Agents criteria, utilize labels to narrow down the list of tests.
- The default state of the criteria shows Tests or Agents which are filtered explicitly by widgets in the dashboard.
- If a dashboard also contains widgets that are not restricted to specific tests and agents, leverage the Enabled or All state selectors to see more tests or agents that are available to you.
Select values that you are interested in. In this instance, we are interested in evaluating agents based in Africa. After selecting tests, agents, or labels, click Apply to enable the filter.
The dashboard will refresh automatically and reload with the above filter applied. Any pre-existing filters at the widget level will be overridden.

If you choose a test that doesn't apply to the current widget configurations, you will receive a No Data message. This message doesn't indicate an error but it means that there's no relevant data for the selected widget. For instance, if all the widgets on a dashboard are set up to display results for HTTP Server tests from Cloud and Enterprise Agents, and you select a DNS test from the filter criteria, all the widgets will show No Data.

Configuring Filters with Multiple Data Sources

If your dashboard comprises widgets from various data sources, you can still utilize the dashboard filters to apply additional values.

To add a data source:

Click on the Add Data Source button and select the desired data source from the drop-down. In this example, we are selecting BGP Routing as the dashboard uses this data source to monitor the overall network's health.

Select the desired Tests and Test Labels from the respective drop-downs and configure the filter.

The dashboard filters configured for a specific data source do not impact widgets created with other data sources. For example, in the above scenario, dashboard filters for the Cloud and Enterprise Agents do not impact widgets with BGP Routing data.

Saving a Filter

You can save filter selections as a Filter Set to reuse them and save time.

To save the filter:

Click on the Filters button and select the Save Filters option.
In the Save Filters side panel. Enter a Name for the filter and add a Description about the filter. The filter set's name needs to be unique for the organization/account group.

It is important to note that the filter will have the same visibility settings as the dashboard it is being saved for. For example, suppose the dashboard is private and not visible to other users in your account group. In that case, the filter will also be private and unavailable to other users in the account group.

Click Add to save the filter. You will be notified on the bottom right of your screen with a toast when the filter gets saved successfully.

Applying a Filter

To apply a saved/pre-existing filter set:

Click on the Filter button and select the Load Saved Filters option.
In the side panel, you can see a list of all the filters with their descriptions and the corresponding information regarding the filters.

Select the desired filter by clicking on the name’s hyperlink. You can also search by name or description for the filters.

Setting a Filter as Default

You can now repurpose your global view dashboard into a specific geographic region’s view. To preserve this view, set a filter as default for the dashboard. To do this:

Navigate to the Dashboard Details panel by clicking on the ellipses in the top right corner of the Dashboard you want to use and then Edit Dashboard.
Select the desired filter from the Saved Filters drop-down.
Save the changes.

You may want to preserve specific widget views to monitor the global performance of the application while also monitoring a geographic location.

You can keep the widget filters fixed by checking the Lock Widget Filters option. This will prevent any dashboard filters from changing the data that the widget shows.
You can use this to persist with the widget’s filter configuration. For example, a widget may always be configured to Cloud Agents, while all other widgets are configured using the dashboard filters to Enterprise Agents in order to compare performance.

Limitations

Agent status, alert list, and test table widgets are not currently supported by dashboard filters.
Snapshots and file downloads (i.e. CSV/PDF) do not persist in the value selection of dashboard filters.
When you first load a dashboard with a default set of filters, the filter criteria along with the selected values may not appear. To resolve the issue, you can collapse the filter bar by pressing the left bracket key [ and then expand it again by pressing the left bracket key [ once more. Another way is to navigate to a different dashboard and then come back to the original dashboard, which will reload the filter bar. We are currently investigating this issue to find a permanent solution.