Creating dashboards and visualizations in Splunk Synthetics
Splunk Observability Cloud comes equipped with numerous types of dashboards and charts, either “out-of-the-box” or custom built, depending on your preferences. Charts enable you to visualize any metrics you send into Observability Cloud, while dashboards are essentially collections of multiple charts. They can be as simple or as complex as necessary, and provide useful and actionable insight into your system at a glance.
If you’d like to experiment with sample dashboards in your UI before creating your own, follow these steps:
- In the Splunk UI, navigate to the Dashboards tab on the bottom-left.
- Scroll down to the Built-In Dashboards section, click on Sample Data, and then Part 1.
- Read through the Part 1 page to learn more and click on the titles of the 3 sample charts to see how they are built.
- Try to build one for yourself! Use the instructions at the bottom of the page to help, and navigate through the rest of the sample data to experiment with additional types of charts.
Out-of-the-box Synthetic Monitoring Dashboard Group
Go to the Dashboards section of Splunk Observability to access the Synthetic Monitoring dashboard group. Here you have a starter pack of dashboards for each test type and Synthetics usage. Use the filters to change the data coming into the charts. Mirror the dashboards or copy charts to your own custom dashboard based on how your teams need to see and alert on Synthetics.
Built-in Performance KPI charts in Splunk Synthetic Monitoring
In Splunk Synthetic Monitoring, the Performance KPIs chart offers a customizable visualization of your recent test results. This type of chart can be used for Browser, Uptime, or API tests.
The Performance KPIs chart is found on each Test's summary view. In the Performance KPIs chart, use the selectors to adjust the following settings:
| Option | Default | Description |
|---|---|---|
|
Time |
Last 8 hours |
Choose the amount of time shown in the chart. |
| Interval |
Run level |
Set the interval between each pair of data points. |
|
Scale |
Linear |
Choose whether the y-axis has a linear or logarithmic scale. |
|
Segment by |
Location |
Choose whether the data points are segmented by run location or no segmentation:
|
|
Locations |
All locations selected |
Choose the run locations you want to display on the chart. |
|
Filter |
All locations selected |
If you have enabled segmentation by location, choose the run locations you want to display on the chart. |
|
Metrics |
Run duration |
By default, the chart displays the Duration metric. Use the drop-down list to choose the metrics you want to view in the chart. |
View results for a specific run
To navigate to the run results view for a single run, select a data point within the Performance KPIs chart with the visualization interval at run level and the segmentation set to Location.
If you’re viewing aggregate data (for example, at a 20-minute interval instead of run level), select a data point to zoom in to see run-level detail. Then select a specific run to see the run results.
You can also select a row in the recent run results table below the Performance KPIs chart.
Use Waterfall charts to visualize Browser test metrics
Every run of a Browser test generates a set of results including a waterfall chart and metrics.
- For a single-page Browser test, you get a single waterfall chart with all requests from that run.
- For a transactional Browser test, the waterfall chart is divided into sections based on the synthetic transactions in your test. Select the name of a synthetic transaction to expand the list of steps involved in that synthetic transaction. Select the name of a step within a synthetic transaction to expand the list of requests involved in each step.
Every run of a Browser test in Splunk Synthetic Monitoring also generates a HTTP archive format (HAR) file that logs the interaction between the test runner and the site being tested. This file records the time it takes for each resource in the site to load, and the waterfall chart is a visual representation of the data in the HAR file. To learn more, refer to Waterfall Charts.
To learn more about metrics in Splunk Observability Cloud, see Metrics, data points, and metric time series in Splunk Observability Cloud.