Create a dashboard

To create a dashboard, choose Create Dashboard from the Dashboard Options menu on the Home > Dashboard page and specify the following:

  • Template - Click the down arrow in the Templates field to display the dashboard templates. Scroll the display to see all available templates. Hover your mouse pointer over a template icon to see an enlarged image with labels identifying the metrics the template contains. The templates include:

    • Blank Dashboard - an empty dashboard that you populate with content widgets of your own choosing

    • Application Overview Dashboard - high-level network performance information about applications you specify using traffic expressions or browse tools

    • Interface Critical Metrics Dashboard - interface information most commonly used for monitoring and first-level troubleshooting; updated every day at 1 AM system time if 3rd-party interfaces are seen

    • Network Operations Dashboard - top traffic volumes for hosts, ports, applications and application servers

    • Overall WAN Dashboard - traffic volumes of optimized and non-optimized WAN and LAN traffic and top network interfaces

    • Response Time Dashboard - response composition, server delay for top application servers and hosts using the web, and top host groups by network round trip time and by server delay

    • Service Dashboard - health of network service delivery displayed as overall health by service and health by location; also displays a service map, location map, and list of current service events

    • Single Sign On Overview Dashboard - performance information about the five most active SSO servers; updated every 24 hours based on bandwidth used for tcp/389, udp/389, tcp/636, tcp/4441, LDAP or Microsoft Active Directory

    • VoIP Call Quality and Usage Dashboard - top VoIP-RTP applications, average MOS, average jitter, %RTP loss packets, traffic volume, and a map of host group pairs

  • Name - Displayed on the dashboard, Dashboards navigation panel, and Manage Dashboards tool.

  • Description - Displayed in the Manage Dashboards tool.

  • Traffic Expression - You can use a traffic expression to limit the traffic displayed in any dashboard widget on the dashboard.  more

  • Collect Data - By default the new dashboard will collect data continuously. To conserve system resources, you can disable data collection when the dashboard is not in use.

  • Sharing - Set the sharing option to Public, Private or Shared with. (Typically you would set up the widgets on your dashboard before making it public to other users.) To share your dashboard with only specific users, choose the users from the drop-down list that is displayed when you select Shared with.

  • Inactivity Timeout - If this dashboard is not viewed for the number of days specified here, the dashboard will stop collecting data to conserve system resources. This is done to keep system resources available for actively used requests. When an inactive dashboard is later accessed, data collection is easily resumed. more

  • Global Time Settings - These settings let you control the time frame information for Network traffic widgets and WAN optimization widgets on the dashboard (with the exception of the Network Interfaces (Preferred) widgets). For dashboard-level control, select the Override widgets checkbox so that you can configure the global time settings for the dashboard. Clearing the checkbox returns control to the widget time settings. Note that widget time settings are not retained when using the dashboard-level controls, so you will need to re-configure the time settings for each widget if you stop using the dashboard time settings.

    • The Override widgets checkbox specifies if time settings are controlled at the dashboard level or individually for each widget. 

    • The Time Frame setting set the reference period for the widgets on the dashboard. The "Starting <a unit of time> ago" selections end within a few minutes of the current time and work the same way as in a widget.  more

    • The Data Resolution setting determines how long a period of data collection is represented by each point on a graph. The resolution selections for dashboards are a the same as those for the widget.  more

    • The Refresh interval specifies how frequently the data in the widget is refreshed. The default settings yield good results while conserving system resources. They can be adjusted for investigating specific problems in greater detail.

    • The "Compare to" box enables you to compare information for the time specified in the “Time Frame” field to information reported for the same time frame a day earlier, a week earlier, or four weeks earlier. The earlier time frame matches the specified time frame to the minute. If data is not available for the entire earlier time frame, no comparison is displayed.

  • Sharing with URL - Controls whether or not the dashboard can be viewed by external users (those not logged in to the NetProfiler). When Sharing with URL is enabled, anyone with the link can access a read-only version of the dashboard in a simplified interface.

    Note that this section only appears when the global setting that controls access to sharing via URL is already enabled on the Administration > Security Compliance page. 

When you click OK, NetProfiler creates the dashboard and displays it in the content area of the page.

Dashboards