Introducing dashboards in the Portal

Overview

Build web-based dashboards in the Portal to readily present the information about your IT infrastructure that interests you the most. Use indicators, tables, line charts, and bar charts to display real-time and historical data related to activities, objects, license use, and IT services within your corporate network.

Thanks to the web-based dashboards of the Portal, quickly find out those parts of your IT infrastructure that are working well and those that may require your attention. Hardware and software issues, network issues, or service degradation are all instantly apparent in properly designed Portal dashboards. The historical data stored in the Portal make dashboards an ideal tool to follow the progress of change and transformation projects as well.

Types of dashboards

Dashboards are grouped into modules. The type of a module determines the type of dashboards that it can hold. There are three types of modules:

Basic module

A basic module holds dashboards based on metrics. The dashboards of basic modules are highly customizable, letting you mix different metrics and distinct visualizations (widgets) for those metrics in the same dashboard. Combine carefully the widgets and metrics in a dashboard to get the most complete and consistent view possible on a topic of interest.

Service module

A service module holds dashboards based on services. Each dashboard in a service module represents a different service. Because service-based dashboards are not as customizable as metric-based dashboards, the are even easier to create. A predefined set of widgets gives you a variety of points of view on the service: the number of devices using the service, the network traffic generated, the issues related to connectivity or software malfunction, etc.

Software metering module

A software metering module holds dashboards that assess the use of software licenses within your company. Each dashboard presents you with information about the number of installations and actual use of a particular application, relating this information with the number of licenses available.

Dashboards and hierarchies

Take advantage of your existing hierarchies when working with dashboards. The Portal automatically compute dashboard results for every level in your hierarchies. When viewing a dashboard, choose a node of the current hierarchy from the hierarchy navigation tool on the ribbon to display information that only applies to that particular node:

A well-designed hierarchy can greatly help you locate the source of problems within your network.