Dash Studio Variables - Feature Requests

[Carl_Brahms]

Hi team,

Here are some items that I think would make dashboard variables more powerful.  Would love to see some solutions for these in a future release.

Ability to use Variables with any metric or metric path

For example, I want a variable that lists every CLR Garbage Collection metric so I can use this in a graph.

Application Infrastructure Performance|$Tier|CLR|Garbage Collection|GC Time Spent (%)

If I could define a variable to take the contents of an arbitrary metric path, like Application Infrastructure Performance|$Tier|CLR|Garbage Collection|*, I could then use that variable to switch graphs between metrics that I'm interested in.

Ability to use regex to extract values for a Variable from any metric path.  

For example, if I want a list of all my clusters listed in Custom Metrics|Extension|ClusterName|Latency, I could create a filter or something, like Custom Metrics|Extension|/(.*)/|Latency.  This would create a variable that contained a selection of ClusterName1, ClusterName2, etc.

Another example: I want a Variable that listed the applications that are called by my $Application,  I could I could create a filter or something, like Overall Application Performance|$Tier|External Calls|Call-HTTP to Discovered backend call - /(.*)/|Calls per Minute.  

This would create a list that contained the discovered backend calls.  E.g. MyApp:80, somesite.com:443, etc..   I could then use this for a cross-application breakdown of Calls per Minute to a particular resource.  This would be very handy for a number of use cases.

I could use this to show incoming transaction metrics from upstream applications, downstream metrics to a particular application, and this would allow me to quickly show the cross-application impact of dependent applications.

Ability to specify an arbitrary list of strings as the contents of a variable

Ability to define an arbirtrary list of strings or values for a variable (e.g. for use with switching between a predefined variety of custom metrics).

For example, I could toggle between my favorite metrics to compare across multiple applications. 

Ability to reference a variable within another variable

I have a variety of application portfolios.  I would like to be able to switch between groups of applications instead of making a user select 10-20 applications each time, or having to click on a different dashboard for each portfolio.

For example: Let's say I define a variable called eCommerce and set it to all of my eCommerce applications.  Then I define a variable called Sales, and set it to all of my Sales applications.  I would like to be able to define a variable called Portfolio, and add $Sales and $eCommerce to the list.    Then in my widgets, I could use $Portfolio to toggle between multiple pre-defined groups of applications.

Ability to use a variable in numerical value fields

I want to adjust the 'Time Shift' offset across multiple widgets using a single variable.  I would like to be able to define a variable called $timeshift, with the values of 60,360,720,1440.  Then in the widgets, instead of specifying a value, I could specify $timeshift and allow the user to choose what data to offset.  If I used this value in the dashboard's relative time range, I could automatically shift between 1 hour, 1 day, 7 day, 30 day views showing the appropriate time shfit windows.

Ability to reference Variable contents in Widget Titles

It useful to be able to label what each widget is showing.  Being able to define a title and reference the contents of a $Variable would make the widgets easier to identify.

Ability to define a Filter or Scope

It would be useful to have a text box that could be used to quickly fill in an Application Name, BT, Tier, or Server Name to filter the contents of a dashboard.

Example: I want to only see Business Transactions that contain the match '*search*'.   If there was a text box  variable that I could type in, I could quickly filter my widgets to show only the BTs that are related to my search functionality.

Ability to mulit-select values in a Variable (on roadmap)

Ability to define Variable defaults (on roadmap)

[William_Patters]

I like these requests. I think the one about widget titles being determined by the content could also apply to dashboard titles. Currently our dashbaord list is a mess because of poor dashboard naming conventions from our users. If the dashboards could incorporate something about the data source in the title (or description?) of the dashboard it would help a lot for organization.

I can't tell if your first item would cover this as well, but I have a feature request to resolve the following issue we're having:

Some metric types (e.g. disk volume for a certain drive) require us to use the "Servers" data source when visualizing the metrics in a dashboard. In a health rule however, you can select an application as the data source and tell it to look at all nodes in a certain tier. Since dashboards currently force us to use the "Servers" data source, we have to individually pick the servers we want to visualize from the controller-wide list of servers. This means we can't tell the dashboard to look at a tier, and if we add/remove servers from a tier we have to manually update the dashboard to look at those new servers. AppD folks, this issue is detailed in support case #203077 if you want more context. 

Thanks, 

Will