¶ Configure and use a table visualization in DESK
Dashboards Classic
To visualize your query results as a table, one metric per column, select Table from the list above the query definition, in the upper-left corner of the page.
¶ Example in Data Explorer
¶ Example pinned to a dashboard as a tile
¶ Change visualization
When switching between visualizations, be aware that some visualization settings are visualization-specific.
- If you select a visualization and configure Settings for that visualization, and then you switch to a different visualization, some of your settings for the first visualization may be ignored because they don't apply to the newly selected visualization. An information icon in the list of visualizations will alert you to the possibility.
- If you switch back to the original visualization, you may need to reconfigure some visualization settings.
¶ Change metric selection
Your visualization can show any selection of metrics in a multi-metric query.
To toggle metrics on and off, you can select the letter next to the metric you want to visualize, or you can select the eye icon .
¶ Sort by column and order
By default, Data Explorer tables are sorted by the first metric in the table query (in descending order based on the aggregation chosen).
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To sort a Data Explorer table by a different column, you need to change the column order.
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Locate the metric by which you want to sort the table.
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Drag Drag handle that metric to the top position in the query definition.
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Run the query.
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The table will be sorted by the metric you dragged to the first place in the query definition.
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To set the sort order
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If Sort by is not already displayed for the metric, select and then select Sort by from the list.
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Set Sort by to the dimension by which you want to sort.
Select the sort order: ASC (ascending) or DESC (descending).
¶ Settings
The Settings section is one of the expandable sections in the right panel of Data Explorer. The contents of the Settings section may vary depending on the visualization you have selected.
¶ Fold transformation
The fold transformation combines a data points list (a timeseries: a collection of data points over the time period) into a single data point.
- The default fold transformation is Auto, which automatically selects the most appropriate time aggregation based on the metric.
- You can manually override Auto with any of the following: Last value, Average, Count, Maximum, Minimum, Sum, Median, Value, Percentile 10th, Percentile 75th, Percentile 90th.
- If you need to see the last reported value for a metric (rather than an aggregation), select Last value.
Fold transformation and resolution
Be aware that the Fold transformation setting affects the resolution.
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If Fold transformation is set to Auto for visualization Table, Single value, Top list, or Honeycomb, the Inf (infinity) resolution is used to maintain backward compatibility. If the chosen metric selector doesn't support the Inf resolution, the fold transformation is automatically added to the end of the query.
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If Fold transformation is set to a value other than Auto, fold is used.
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Because all metric selectors are queried using the same total value mechanism (either fold or Inf), adding a new selector that requires fold might change the result of the other selectors.
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To inspect the actual query used by Data Explorer, go to the Result section in Data Explorer and select > Copy request.
¶ Settings per metric
Table column names are the same as the metric names by default. You can change the name of table column headings. The query definition retains the metric's original name.
To rename a column
- In the Settings section, select for the metric/column you want to rename.
- Edit the name, and then select the checkmark to save the new name.
¶ Unit and Format
Use the Unit and Format settings to determine how your data is displayed. If you export to a CSV file, the Unit and Format settings are also reflected in the exported values.
¶ Unit
Use the Unit setting to set the unit in which the metric is displayed.
- None = No unit displayed
- Auto = DESK selects an appropriate display unit
- Other selections specify the exact unit to display. The options here depend on the metric's unit. A time metric, for example, offers alternative units for displaying time.
- To add a custom unit/suffix string, type the custom string in the Unit box and then select it from the list.
- In Advanced mode, you can use :setUnit
(<unit>)to select from a wider range of units. - Examples of order-of-magnitude notation in DESK:
| Notation | Factor | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| k | 10^3 | kilo, thousand |
| M | 10^6 | mega, million |
| G | 10^9 | giga, billion |
| T | 10^12 | tera, trillion |
¶ Format
Use the Format setting to configure the number of decimal places displayed for the selected metric.
None = No formatting.
Auto = DESK selects an appropriate format. For example, where None would display 5.062357754177517 %, Auto would display 5.06 %.
Other selections specify the number of decimal places to display: 0, 0.0, 0.00, 0.000
¶ Examples
¶ Example: bytes
When the basic unit of the metric is bytes:
- If you set Unit to Auto, DESK automatically expresses the results in a human-readable unit, which in this case could be GiB.
A byte-based unit can have either a binary or decimal base, which will determine whether DESK selects, for example, GiB or GB. If no base is defined in the metric itself, a decimal base is used.
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If the automatically selected unit isn't suitable in your case, you can force DESK to express the same values in a specific unit (Unit = B, KiB, MiB, or GiB).
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If you want to see raw data (no conversion), you can set Unit to None and see the results in the basic unit of the metric (which in this case is bytes).
¶ Example: dollars and cents
When the basic unit of a metric is dollars and cents:
- For smaller values, to see the results expressed in exact dollars and cents: set Unit to Auto, and set Format to 0.00 (to have two decimal places for the cents).
- For larger values, to see the results expressed in thousands, millions, or billions of dollars and no cents: set Unit to k (thousand), M (million), G (billion), and set Format to 0 (to see nothing after the decimal point).
¶ Example: exact counts
When the basic unit for the metric is a count:
- To see an exact count:
Set Unit to Auto
Set Format to None
To see a rough count:
- Set Unit to k (thousand), M (million), G (billion), or T (trillion), depending on the magnitude of your values
- Set Format to 0.0, 0.00, or 0.0000, depending on how many decimal places make sense in combination with the selected Unit setting
¶ Example: thresholds
When setting threshold values:
- If you select a Unit (for example, MiB), the Threshold settings are then prepared to match the selected unit, so you just need to enter threshold values without specifying MiB.
- If you set Unit to Auto (to let DESK automatically scale the displayed output), you still need to set Threshold values in a specific unit such as bytes.
¶ Columns
Use the checkboxes in the Columns section of the Data Explorer table visualization to enable and disable columns individually. These selections are reflected in the resulting table dashboard tiles.
¶ Rows
¶ Data Explorer
In Data Explorer, a maximum of 100 results are returned.
To set an explicit limit
- If Limit is not already displayed in the query editor, select and then select Limit from the list.
- Set Limit to one of the available values.
To remove the limit from your query, turn on Advanced mode and delete the :limit(n) component of the query.
¶ Dashboard table tile
In a dashboard table tile, the maximum number of rows displayed is determined by the query limit set in Data Explorer. Results are displayed in pages on the tile.
¶ Pages
Use the controls at the bottom of the Result section of a Data Explorer table visualization to page through tables.
Table dashboard tiles also have page controls.
The page size of a table dashboard tile is automatically resized to match the size of the tile.
¶ Threshold
To enhance your visualizations, you can set thresholds that are reflected in your visualization.
A table can have as many thresholds as there are metrics displayed on the table. This example has five metrics, five columns, each with a different threshold definition. Link cell color to thresholds is turned on.
Tile text color is adjusted automatically for contrast with the background threshold color.
¶ Set table thresholds
To make per-metric threshold settings
- optional In the Threshold section, select Link cell color to thresholds
When this is turned on, the background of every cell in the table is colored according to threshold.
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When this is turned off, only the cell data is colored.
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Make per-metric threshold settings.
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Select a metric name
- Set the threshold values for that metric
- optional Adjust threshold colors
Select Add threshold as needed to add thresholds for another metric.
¶ Hide or show threshold colors
To hide or show threshold colors (per threshold definition) without deleting the threshold settings, in the Thresholds section, select for that metric.
¶ Delete threshold settings
To delete the threshold settings for a metric, in the Thresholds section, select the trash can icon for that metric.
¶ Frequently asked questions
¶ Why am I not seeing all series of my metric?
- The default number of displayed series per metric is 20. Consequently, some series might be missing in Data Explorer. To ensure the series data you're looking for is displayed, provide more specific filters such as a management zone or an entity name filter.
- The maximum number of displayed series per metric is 100. Note that this limit applies even if you remove the limit transformation from the metric selector on the Code tab.
If series data is absent for a metric expression, see Why is the result of my metric expression empty?.
¶ Why are some table cells empty when they should have values?
The root cause of this issue is often the same as for Why am I not seeing all series of my metric?
The metric series are limited to a certain number.
Suppose you query builtin:host.cpu.usage and builtin:host.cpu.idle split by dt.entity.host. For both metrics, the top 100 hosts are requested per default. But the top 100 hosts of the builtin:host.cpu.usage metric probably diverges from the top 100 hosts of the builtin:host.cpu.idle metric, leading to empty cells in the table for some hosts.