Tactical Overview (Dashboard Widget)

Description

The Tactical Overview dashboard widget provides three data displays based on the "health" status of all active monitoring checks. This widget may take up to 3 minutes to update its display after a change has occurred.

Display Mode

This widget has two display modes, wide and narrow. Narrow mode omits the summary data displays on the left and compacts the table by aggregating all check statuses into a single STATE column. The widget will automatically choose the correct mode based on the layout of the dashboard in which it is placed. The following images show the wide and narrow display modes, respectively.

Wide display  

Narrow display

 

 

Components

This widget follows the standard Netreo color convention for the health status of monitoring checks.

• Green = OK
• Yellow = WARNING
• Red = CRITICAL
• Blue = ACKNOWLEDGED (CRITICAL)
• Orange = UNKNOWN

The three data sets provided by the widget and their displays are as follows.

Total Checks by Status

Total checks by status.

 This section displays the combined total number of active host availability, service and threshold checks that are currently in the OK (HEALTHY), ACKNOWLEDGED (ACK), WARNING and CRITICAL states. Note that these totals do not include anomaly threshold checks in any state, and that the states displayed do not include the UNKNOWN state for service checks.

To reiterate, these are the numbers of active checks in Netreo, not a count of managed devices.

Check Status by Check Type

Check status by check type.

 This section displays check status broken down by check type.

The top left of each panel displays the total number of active checks of that type (host availability, service and threshold).

The bottom displays the total number of those checks in each of the states possible for that check. Note that the panel for service checks does include the UNKNOWN state unique to that check type. Also note that the panel for threshold checks does not include anomaly threshold checks in its totals.

The colored display in the middle of the panels provides a visual representation of the totals, allowing you to see relative impact.

Check Status by Device Group

Check status by device group.

 This section displays a table of check statuses broken down by check type (along the top) and device group (down the side), along with recent-rate-of-status-change indicators. It consists of a table and controls that list all of the members of a selected device group type.

The leftmost column displays a list of device groups of the type selected in the control buttons at the top of the widget. These control buttons allows you to display sites, categories and business workflows. (The device group control buttons will not be available if the widget is restricted to a specific device group or pivoting is not allowed. See configuration below.) Select a device group name in the table to navigate to the dashboard for that individual group.

If the "Sites" control button is selected, and the site status feature is enabled, an additional SITE STATUS column appears between the SITES column and the HOSTS >> STATE sub-column. This column shows the site status for each site in the list. Click the site status icon to navigate to a page with more detailed information on the hosts and service statuses for that site.

Across the top of the table are columns for host availability, service, threshold and anomaly checks. Each of these columns has a sub-column for check state and rate of change (except anomalies, which have no rate of change).

The STATE column displays the total number of service checks within that device group that are currently in each of the possible check states (OK, ACKNOWLEDGED, WARNING, UNKNOWN and CRITICAL). Select a populated, non-OK status indicator to navigate to a page appropriate to the check type where all current issues can be viewed in more detail, and acknowledged if necessary. (Note that ACKNOWLEDGED is technically an incident state, but it is included here to distinguish problems currently being worked on (i.e., acknowledged) from new problems.)

The RoC (rate of change) column indicates whether or not the overall state of the group as a whole has been trending towards better or worse over the last month-to-date. Please note that the RoC column is not intended to be predictive—rather, it is a reflection of conditions that have already passed.

If all host availability checks within a particular device group are failed (CRITICAL), the entire row for that group will turn red and all indicators will be replaced with an "All Hosts Down" warning (the number in parentheses is the number of down hosts in that group). This makes sense, as all other check types will definitely fail if a host is unreachable. If only some members of the group are down, the group will display normally. If you would like to highlight groups that have any hosts down at all, there is a setting in the user preferences labeled HIGHLIGHT DOWNED HOSTS. When switched on; if even one host within the group goes down, the group name will be displayed in red and the entire row will be displayed with a faded red background.

A switch labeled "Show Active Alarms" at the top left of the table allows you to display all of the device groups of the selected type (off, default), or only those groups currently experiencing problems (on). The switch becomes blue when the control is in the "on" position. This is useful if you have a large number of completely “healthy” device groups. This control does not display if the legacy style table is being used (see configuration below).

The “Search” box at the top right of the table functions as a realtime filter for the list of device groups. Entering even a partial term will instantly pare the list to only those device groups containing the search term in their name.

Configuration

Tactical Overview widgets are added to a dashboard on the Customize Dashboards page (Administration > Users > Custom Dashboards).

Multiple widgets of this type may be added to a dashboard, each with their own configuration.

When adding a Tactical Overview widget to a dashboard, there are several options that need to be configured before the widget can be used. After adding the widget to a dashboard, click its gear icon button to open the widget options pop-up.

The fields and their descriptions are outlined below.

• DEFAULT TYPE
  Select the type of device group (category, site or business workflow) that will be shown by default in the main table when the widget loads or is refreshed. The other group types can still be selected dynamically using the Sites | Categories | Business Workflows control buttons above the table after the widget has loaded.
• SPECIFICALLY
  Select "Overview" to populate the main table with the list of device groups of the type selected in DEFAULT TYPE above. Or, select a specific device group of that type to populate the main table with the list of individual devices that belong to that specific group.
  • If you select a specific device group here, the ALLOW PIVOTING option below will be removed.
• DISPLAY TYPE
  Select "New" for the modern table style, or "Legacy" to display the main table using the old Netreo "statistic category" style.
  • If "Legacy" is selected, the DEFAULT FILTER option below will be removed.
• DEFAULT FILTER
  Select either "All" or "Problems" to set the default selection of the all | problems control buttons that appear above the main table. These button allow you to dynamically change the table display to show either all members, or only members who are currently experiencing problems. This allows you to see problem groups/devices more quickly.
  • If "Legacy" is selected in DISPLAY TYPE above, the control buttons will not appear above the main table and this field will not appear in the options.
• STATUS SUMMARY
  Select "Hide" to show only the main table without the summary elements that normally appear on the left side of the widget. Select "Show" to show all widget display elements (does not affect compact mode).
• ALLOW PIVOTING
  Select "Yes" to display the Sites | Categories | Business Workflows control buttons above the main table that allow you to dynamically select which device group type the table shows. Select "No" to restrict the widget to the device group type selected in DEFAULT TYPE.

If a specific device group is selected in the SPECIFICALLY field above, this option will not be available.

After adding the widget and saving your options, remember to save the dashboard for its display to be updated.