Creating and Using Kibana Dashboards

Figure 6.61 – Importing saved objects and selecting the right data view

3. Once all the objects have been imported, you will get a recap as shown in the following screenshot:

Figure 6.65 – Dashboard view after drilldown

Et voilà! You have just built your first dashboard with a nice touch of interactivity thanks to controls and drilldowns.

How it works...

In Kibana, a dashboard is a collection of visualizations and saved searches that you can arrange and customize to display the data that is most important to you. You can create multiple dashboards for different use cases, and each dashboard can have its own set of visualizations and searches.

Dashboards are a powerful tool for data analysis because they allow you to see multiple visualizations side by side and quickly identify patterns and trends in your data. You can also use dashboards to monitor key metrics in real time, which is especially useful for operational use cases. Kibana provides a wide range of visualization types that you can use to create custom dashboards, including bar charts, line charts, pie charts, tables, and more.

The following table outlines a framework for choosing the right visualization:

Table 6.2 – Choosing the right visualization

In addition to visualizations, Kibana dashboards also support saved searches, which allow you to quickly filter your data based on specific criteria. You can save searches that you use frequently and add them to your dashboard for easy access.

Overall, Kibana dashboards are a powerful tool for data analysis and monitoring. They allow you to quickly identify patterns and trends in your data, monitor key metrics in real time, and customize your view of the data to suit your needs.

There’s more...

In our recipe, we have used dashboard drilldowns, but you can also create URL and Discover drilldowns. With the former, you can link to data outside of Kibana, and with the latter, you can open Discover from a Lens panel while keeping all the contextual information.

Dashboards are great when used in Kibana, but you can also share them with teams and colleagues outside of Kibana. You have many options that are easily accessible from the Share menu in the toolbar when it comes to sharing dashboards: you can interactively embed dashboards as an iFrame, export them as reports in various formats (PNG, CSV, PDF, etc.), and share them as direct links for easy access.

When building dashboards, design thinking is a good practice. Start by asking yourself the following questions:

• What is the outcome or the goal of the dashboard? Is it about understanding high-level behaviors, visually correlating specific metrics at the same time, or finding the root cause of an issue?
• Who is using this dashboard to do their job? If you are building it for a team or someone else, step into their shoes to visualize their perspective when they will need that data.

See also

• Looking for more design tips to elevate your dashboards? Look no further and check out this blog: https://www.elastic.co/blog/debugging-kibana-dashboards

Conclusion

In this guide, we've explored the process of integrating various visualizations into a comprehensive Kibana dashboard, enhancing user interaction through control-based drilldowns. By following the steps outlined, you should now have a functional and interactive dashboard that can provide valuable insights into your data.

We began by preparing the necessary visualizations and then moved on to assembling the dashboard by adding images for personalization and aligning various traffic visualizations. We also incorporated control panels for dynamic filtering, allowing for more precise data analysis. The final touch was adding drilldowns to enable seamless navigation between detailed and overview dashboards.

Kibana dashboards offer powerful tools for data analysis and real-time monitoring. By displaying multiple visualizations side by side, you can quickly identify patterns and trends, making dashboards invaluable for operational and analytical use cases.

Remember, the key to a successful dashboard is thoughtful design—consider the goals, the audience, and the specific data insights needed. Utilize the wide range of visualization types that Kibana offers and don't hesitate to leverage the sharing options to collaborate with your team effectively.

For further reading and advanced tips on designing intuitive dashboards, building them efficiently, or debugging, check out the additional resources provided. Happy dashboarding!

Author Bio

Huage Chen is a member of Elastic's customer engineering team and has been with Elastic for over five years, helping users throughout Europe to innovate and implement cloud-based solutions for search, data analysis, observability, and security. Before joining Elastic, he worked for 10 years in web content management, web portals, and digital experience platforms.

Yazid Akadiri has been a solutions architect at Elastic for over four years, helping organizations and users solve their data and most critical business issues by harnessing the power of the Elastic Stack. At Elastic, he works with a broad range of customers, with a particular focus on Elastic observability and security solutions. He previously worked in web services-oriented architecture, focusing on API management and helping organizations build modern applications.