How to create and edit charts

Table of contents

• Getting to the editor
• Setting up metrics
• Modifying the chart
  • General
  • Metric
  • Series
  • Saving the chart

Getting to the editor

There are two ways to create/edit charts. The first way is by going to an existing dashboard with panels on it, entering edit mode, clicking the button in the top right of the panel and clicking edit. This will open the panel editor. If the panel contains a chart, it will open the editor for a chart panel type.

The other way is to go to the metrics page from the sidebar. This will load up the dashboard list. Click the Panels tab at the top. This will show you all available panels you have access to. You can edit an existing one by double clicking on any cell of the row or single clicking the edit icon at the end. To make a new panel, click the very bottom row.

New panels (or panels without any charts or widgets) will open to a selection screen where you can choose to make it a Chart or a Widget. Click Chart to get started.

Setting up metrics

You will be met with a lot of buttons and options but the first thing we want to focus our attention on is the table down the bottom. This is the metrics table where we tell the cloud what information we want to query to plot on our chart.

• Label
  • A user defined label used to identify the metric. This value will be shown in the chart legend, chart tooltips and in various aspects of the right hand sidebar.
• Data type
  • Data type is broken up to Metric and Type. The Metric is the actual information that we want to request. This can be sensor data, power levels, arc levels, issues data and much more. New metrics will continually be added here so check back every now and again for new metrics. The Type in simple terms refers to what each line on the chart represents for this metric. If you select site, each line will represent a value for the site. For tenancy, you will get one line for each tenancy for the metric, so you can end up with several lines on a chart for a single metric. This goes hand in hand with the Area column to group the type that is displayed.
• Area
  • The Area input types are determined based on the Type set in the Data type column. It will allow you to group anything above the type set in data type in this column. For instance, you can only pick a Site type area if the type in data type is set to site as nothing is above it. If you have a Control system type in data type, you can pick site, tenancy or control system area as we can group control systems by those area types. If you pick Tenancy area type, you will get one point on the chart for each control system in the selected tenancy for the metric.
• Data function
  • This is how the data is transformed before it gets to the chart. The available options for this column is based on the Data type column. These are applied to each point in the chart for the specified Interval.
    • Last max: Takes the last reported value in the interval from each applicable child of the type in data type and returns the maximum of those values
    • Last count: Takes the last reported value in the interval from each applicable child of the type in data type and returns the count of the number of values which have a value above zero
    • Max count: Takes the maximum reported value in the interval from each applicable child of the type in data type and returns the count of the number of values
    • Max sum percentage: Takes the maximum reported value in the interval from each applicable child of the type in data type and returns the sum of the values as a percentage
    • Sum: Sums all reported values in the interval from each applicable child of the type in data type and returns the sum of those values
    • Max sum: Takes the maximum reported value in the interval from each applicable child of the type in data type and returns the sum of those values
    • Last sum: Takes the last reported value in the interval from each applicable child of the type in data type and returns the sum of those values
    • Sum sum last: Takes the sum of the reported values in the interval from each applicable child of the type in data type and returns the sum of those values for the last interval only (i.e. should only ever return a single value)
    • Last: Takes the last reported value in the interval from each applicable child of the type in data type and returns them
    • None: Raw values, i.e. no transformations are applied to the data
    • Max: Takes the maximum reported value in the interval from each applicable child of the type in data type and returns them
    • Min: Takes the minimum reported value in the interval from each applicable child of the type in data type and returns them
    • Average: Takes the mean reported value in the interval from each applicable child of the type in data type and returns them
    • Last average: Takes the last reported value in the interval from each applicable child of the type in data type and returns the mean of those values
• Filter
  • Applies the given filters to the results. The available option for this column is based on the Data type column. There are different types of filters for each metric that supports it and will return less points for the chart based on the filter.
• Interval
  • Determines the interval for the point or data set. In most cases you will receive one point on the chart for each interval, presuming that there are values for that interval. In the case of none, you will just get as many values as possible, although you may get limited to a certain number.
• Preset
  • Used for historical metrics. Displays a preset timeframe for the chart. The special presets are None and Custom. Custom allows you to set your own From and To date in the following columns. None takes the specified timeframe from the top right of the editor. This timeframe picker is visible on any dashboard that has at least one chart with a none preset. Changing this will change all charts with the none preset on the dashboard.
    
• From
  • Used for Custom preset values as the date and time to begin the data set from
• To
  • Used for Custom preset values as the date and time to end the data set at
• Actions
  • There are four shortcut actions here that you can apply to the metric. The eyeball icon toggles the metric visibility on the chart. The pencil icon takes you to the Metric tab in the right hand side bar to modify the chart specific properties for the metric. The rubbish bin icon deletes the row entirely. The double line icon is used to move the row around to re-order the metric. This changes the rendering order for the chart.

Modifying the chart

After you have selected the metrics you want to display on the chart, you can turn your attention to the sidebar on the right hand side of the screen. This is where all of the properties are located that will affect how your chart is displayed including chart type, colours, units and other various settings that change how the chart looks. These settings can change depending on the Chart type that is selected but below are some common settings you will find here but it is not limited to what is listed here.

General

• Panel
  • Panel label
    • A custom label used to identify the panel that is displayed in the top left of the chart, as well as in the panels table on the metrics page and any time you are cloning a panel onto another dashboard
  • Chart type
    • The type of chart to be rendered. Most of the types are historical graphs with the exception of a small few.
    • The Column type displays each metric in its own column and treats each metric as a "category". Generally you use the same metric multiple times with different filters to form a complete column type.
    • The Bar type is the same as the column type except is horizontal instead of vertical
    • The Gauge type is a special chart that has a low (0-20%), medium (20-50%) and high (50-100%) zone and one or more needles that point to one of the zones based on its value. You can set a static maximum value for the gauge or use another metric to dynamically generate the max value for the gauge.
    • The Multi type is, as the name implies, multiple types of charts in a single chart. The type for each metric can be changed in the Metric tab of the sidebar. Currently we only support historical chart types being on the same chart but will potentially expand this in the future to support combination of other types.
    • The Table type takes the data and represents it as a table. While this works for most metrics, there are some metrics that work better with table types than others. To add/remove columns, change column titles, change the alignment and various other properties of the table, press the dropdown button in the column headings.
      
      The Colour key is used to determine how to colour the text in the column. This only works with severity keys currently. The Data key is used to determine what value to display in the column. This works best for queries that return back data that has keys in the response rather than just number values such as historical issues.
  • Period
    • Adds a dropdown to the top right of the panel and forces a preset timeframe onto the graph. Currently only supports Year and will query the year of data for the selected year. Metrics with short intervals may not work with the selected period if it queries too many data points for the period and interval combination.
      
  • Search enabled

    • Adds a search box to the top of tables and column/bar charts which allows searching through the data with ease.

      

• Tabs
  • Adds tabs to the top of the panel that have preset timeframes on them. You can add as many as you'd like and can set the default tab that is selected when the panel loads by clicking on it as indicated by the checkmark on the right side of the tab heading.
    
• Legend
  • Chart legend enabled
    • Adds a legend at the top of the chart for all of the metrics for the chart
      
  • Dashboard legend enabled
    • Adds a severity legend down the bottom of the dashboard if at least one chart on the page has this setting enabled
      
• X-axis
  • Label
    • A custom label to be displayed along the x-axis
      
  • Metrics
    • Lists of metrics that are plotted on this axis. Metrics can only be on one axis at a time. By default there is only one x-axis but you can add more hidden axes with the button below and assign metrics to the new axis instead.
  • New hidden axis
    • Adds a new hidden axis that you can assign metrics to. This axis won't be displayed on the chart, i.e. you won't see the dates and times for this axis. The main use case for this is for displaying the same or similar metrics for two different timeframes of the same length. A good use case for this is having two different months of power usage for the site on two different axis. They will be displayed on top of each other making it easy to compare the two months.
  • New weather axis
    • Adds a new weather axis, of which there can only be a maximum of one. This displays another axis below the main x-axis which contains weather information for the timeframe. This axis cannot be edited at all. It is more so just a toggle for it.
• Y-axis
  • Label
    • A custom label to be displayed along the y-axis. If this label is provided and a Unit is set, it will display the unit at the end of the label rather than along the y-axis values.
      
  • Unit
    • Indicates the unit that all of the metrics on this y-axis are being returned in. If you have very large numbers being displayed on the chart, it could be that you need to set a unit here. Most general purpose sensor metrics will need the relevant unit set here that is set on the sensor.
  • Target unit
    • Forces the scaling of the values to be scaled to this unit. Even if the number is very large or very small it will be scaled to this target unit.
  • Min
    • The minimum value that will be displayed on this axis. Anything below this value will be rendered outside of the graph's bounds.
  • Max
    • The maximum value that will be displayed on this axis. Anything above this value will be rendered outside of the graph's bounds.
  • Metrics
    • Similar to the X-axis Metrics setting, contains the list of metrics to be rendered onto this y-axis. Each metric can only be one axis.
  • New hidden axis
    • Adds a new hidden y-axis. This can be used to compare trends of different metrics that have similar looking graphs but much differently scaled values.

Metric

This tab consists of a dropdown that contains all of the metrics from the metrics table. Selecting any of the metrics will display relevant settings for that metric. Different chart types will display different settings in this tab. You can also get straight to the settings by clicking the pencil icon on the very right of a row in the metrics table. Settings here will set it across all series/lines for the metric. If you want to change just one series/line on the chart, you can do that from the Series tab.

• Colour type
  • Changes between solid and striped colour types for the chart
• Colour
  • The main colour for the chart
• Stripe colour
  • The secondary colour for the chart. For graphs with lines, will colour the line. For column and bar types, will give it a striped pattern and colour the stripes this colour
• X-axis
  • Changes which x-axis the metric belongs to
• Y-axis
  • Changes which y-axis the metric belongs to
• Invert values
  • The values for the metric are inverted before being rendered onto the chart
• Line width
  • For charts with lines, changes the rendered line to be this width in pixels
• Square series
  • For charts with lines, squares off the lines rather than going directly to the next point in the series
• Hide in legend
  • If checked, the metric will not appear in the chart legend if enabled
• Disable tooltip
  • If checked, does not display the metric in the tooltip when hovering over the chart
• Disable markers
  • If checked, you will need see the metric's points/markers on the chart when it is rendered, you will just see a line

Series

Each metric can contain multiple series. This is determined based on the Data type and Area values chosen in the metrics table. You can change the settings for each individual series in this tab. The settings in this tab are the same settings that you find in the Metric tab. For example, you can pick tenancy type for data type and site for the area and you will get all tenancies on the site with values set for the metric. If you want one particular tenancy to be red on the graph and the rest left the default colour, you can do that from the series tab.

If you want to change settings for all series on a metric, go to the Metric tab instead. The only difference in this tab is there is a button to reset the series settings back to the default, which will take the same settings from the Metric tab and apply them to the series instead.

Saving the chart

Once you have finished modifying the chart and styling it the way you want it, click the Save button up the top left. You can also Discard changes if you don't want to save. There is also the ability to Save as. This is generally used when you edit a chart that is similar but you don't want to save over it, you can just save it as a copy instead.

The Save button will not be enabled if you are editing a system panel but you can still Save as to save a copy instead. If you started editing from a dashboard, you will need to save the dashboard in order for your changes to be saved in the cloud.