Create and manage dashboards

You can monitor both your metric and span data by adding charts to unified dashboards based on queries to your telemetry data. Dashboards can contain any number of charts. Once created, you can apply global filters and change the reporting time period. You can also drag and drop the charts to rearrange the dashboard.

You can create an alert from a dashboard chart or start your investigation and add a chart to a notebook or use Change Intelligence.

Using Terraform? You can use the Lightstep Terraform provider to create and manage your dashboards and charts. You can also use it to export existing dashboards into the Terraform format.

Create a dashboard

This image shows how to create a dashboard. The steps below describe the procedure in more detail.

1. From the navigation bar, click Dashboards.

2. Click Create a dashboard to access a new, blank dashboard.

3. Click New Dashboard and Add a description to rename and give details about your dashboard.

   The description appears on the dashboard and Dashboard List view. The description can be up to 256 characters, and it supports Markdown. Here’s an example:

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    Use this dashboard to monitor and identify issues with Lightstep's customer experience.
    Have questions?
    Ask in [#customer-experience](https://lightstep.com/).
   
    Docs:
   
    - [Runbooks](https://lightstep.com/)
    - [Troubleshooting](https://lightstep.com/)
   

You’re now ready to add charts to the dashboard.

You can also add a chart to the dashboard from the Service Directory view.

Edit a dashboard

You can apply filters and global time periods to all the charts. You can also clone and delete dashboards and charts, rearrange charts, and share the dashboard with other Lightstep Observability users.

Apply global filters

You can change the data reported on in the dashboard by applying global filters based on available attributes (tags/labels from your metrics and spans. For example, say you have these charts in your dashboard.

You hear that the customer PackingKings is experiencing issues accessing your app. You can filter the charts to show just data from that customer.

Global filters only affect your view - they are not persisted.

To add global filters, click Apply filters and choose the attributes for your filter. You can select from the list or type in a key/value pair.

When adding multiple filters, Lightstep narrows down your choices based on attributes available after the previous filter. Multiple selections use AND to join filters.

Global filters and span charts

When you add a global filter, you’re changing the query for each chart on the dashboard. If a chart is using a Stream to retain a span query and you apply a global filter, it’s considered a new query that is not retained (you will only see data currently in the retention window). If you add a chart with a Stream’s retained query to a dashboard that uses global filters, the query is retained as a Stream without those filters applied.

Change the reporting time range

By default, Lightstep Observability shows data from the last hour.

To change a dashboard’s time range, click the time picker drop-down and:

• Set relative time ranges in minutes, hours, days, or weeks.
• Enter custom time ranges.

To help you explore data, the time picker saves your custom time ranges and shows them under Recently used. You can also click the < > controls next to the drop-down to move back and forward in time.

Changing the time period only affects your view - the change isn’t persisted.

Data may not be available for the time range you select, based on the type of data and your data retention policy.

Share a dashboard

Lightstep creates a short link that you can use to share a dashboard. Any filters or time ranges applied to the dashboard are maintained when the other person visits the link.

To get the short link, click the Share dashboard icon and copy the URL.

Clone a dashboard

There are two ways to clone an entire dashboard:

• In the dashboard, click ⋮, select Clone, and click Clone in the dialog.

• In the Dashboard List view, click ⋮ next to the relevant dashboard, select Clone, and click Clone in the dialog.

Cloned dashboards do not copy over the global filters and they reset to the default time period of the last 60 minutes.

Clone a chart on a dashboard

Follow these steps to clone a chart on a dashboard:

1. On the chart, click ⋮ and select Clone.
2. In the dialog, update the chart name and click Clone. The cloned chart appears at the bottom of your dashboard.

Cloned charts use any global filters and the time period set for the dashboard.

Rearrange charts on a dashboard

You can move charts added to a dashboard by dragging and dropping them. Hover over a chart title. When the cursor turns into a hand, drag and drop the chart into its desired location.

Delete a chart from a dashboard

Follow these steps to delete a chart:

1. On the chart, click ⋮ and select Delete.
2. In the dialog, click Yes, delete.

Deleting a chart from a dashboard deletes it from everyone’s view of the dashboard.

Delete a dashboard

You can delete a dashboard from either the dashboard itself or from the Dashboard list. Deleting a dashboard also deletes all charts created for it.

To delete it from the dashboard, click ⋮, select Delete, and click Yes, delete in the dialog.

To delete it from the list view, click ⋮ for the dashboard, select Delete, and click Yes, delete in the dialog.

View a single chart

To get a better look at a chart on a dashboard, you can enlarge it. Hover over the chart and click the Expand chart icon.

The chart opens in the editing view with the query builder collapsed. Click Query to open the builder and edit the query.

If the chart contains multiple queries or queries and a formula, you can toggle their display on and off below the chart.

The toggle selection is not persisted to the dashboard.

Manage dashboards

You manage all your dashboards from the Dashboard view. By default, dashboards are listed in alphabetical order.

Sorting and dashboard favorites are saved only for a user. Other users will not see your sort or favorites.

Sort dashboards

You can sort the dashboards by any column.

Search for a dashboard

Use the Search field to find a dashboard. You can search by name, date, type, or creator’s name.

Favorite a dashboard

On the Dashboard list page, click the star to favorite a dashboard. Favorited dashboards always appear at the top of the dashboard list.

Create an alert from a dashboard chart

You can create an alert from a chart, but because alerts require a specific structure, not all charts can be used to create one. If your query contains a group-by (and in some cases, regex), you will not be able to create an alert (the option is disabled). For queries that don’t meet other requirements, you’ll be able to edit the query on the Alert Configuration page.

Creating an alert from a span query automatically creates a Stream.

Follow these steps to create an alert from a chart:

1. Hover over the chart in the dashboard, click the More ( ⋮ ) icon, and select Create an alert.

   The Alert Configuration page opens in a new tab using the query from the original chart. A banner describes the edits needed to create a valid alert. Fields in violation are highlighted.

2. Fix the violations.

3. By default, the title is the same as the original chart. You can change it and you can add a description, if needed.

4. Continue creating the alert.

Add a chart to a notebook

You can add to a notebook for when, during an investigation, you want to be able to run ad hoc queries, take notes, and save your analysis for use in postmortems or runbooks. Notebooks allow you to view metric and trace data from different places in Lightstep Observability together, in one place.

To add to a notebook, click Add to notebook and search to choose an existing notebook or create a new notebook.

When you add to a notebook, a chart is created using the same query. The annotation is a link back to the original, so you can quickly return to the origin of your investigation.

Learn more about notebooks.

Use Change Intelligence

When you notice an issue on the dashboard, you can use Change Intelligence to help determine what caused the change in performance. For metric data, Change Intelligence looks at traces that include spans from key operations on the service that emitted the metric. For span data, it searches traces that match the chart’s query. In both cases, Change Intelligence surfaces the attributes that appeared in traces with performance issues occurring at the same time as the spike in the chart.

You can’t use Change Intelligence with big number charts.

To run Change Intelligence, click Analyze deviation or click directly in the chart and select Analyze deviation.

Change Intelligence opens in the side panel, where you can begin your investigation. You can also click View full Change Intelligence to navigate to the expanded view.

Follow these instructions to get started.