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Updating deprecated HTML dashboards

 

You are an administrator of a Splunk deployment that uses HTML dashboards that you created by converting Simple XML dashboards to HTML dashboards. You originally created them to better handle complex functionality and styling in your app.

The ability to convert Simple XML to HTML dashboards was removed in Splunk Enterprise 8.1 and Splunk Cloud Platform 8.0.2004, but you have still been using your dashboards. Recently, older versions of jQuery have been deprecated and jQuery v3.5.0 (or newer) is being used instead. This change impacts your HTML dashboards, which depend on jQuery, so you'll need to change them to keep using them.

Solution

With the release of Splunk Dashboard Studio, Splunk supports native capabilities to easily customize dashboards, without needing to convert to HTML or depend on custom development. Below is an example of a Studio dashboard. 

How to check if you have HTML dashboards

HTML dashboards are defined as files in the following directories:

  • $SPLUNK_HOME/etc/apps/appname/local/data/ui/html/
  • $SPLUNK_HOME/etc/users/username/appname/local/data/ui/html/

You can check if you have any HTML dashboards by reviewing the jQuery Admin Dashboard, which you can find in the Dashboards list, in Search & Reporting app. Look for the panel at the bottom of the dashboard, which lists any HTML dashboards in your environment. 

How to update your HTML dashboards

You have three options for updating your HTML dashboards:

  1. The preferred and most durable option is to rebuild your HTML dashboard in Dashboard Studio. Dashboard Studio provides the out of the box capabilities needed to cover most customization use cases (for example adding images, free placement of objects, and more). 
  2. Alternatively, you can rebuild your dashboard as a Simple XML dashboard, extended with Custom JS. Unfortunately, you must rebuild the dashboard as there is no way to convert an HTML dashboard back to Simple XML. 
  3. The final option is to move your HTML files from /data/ui/html to /appserver/static/template and add a Single Page Application (SPA) view that specifies <view template="app-name:/template/path" type="html">. This option has the most overhead as you will be responsible for packaging all dependencies, and for managing future library updates. 

You can find more information about the jQuery update and HTML dashboard removal by visiting the developer docs portal.

Next steps

The content in this guide comes from a previously published blog, one of the thousands of Splunk resources available to help users succeed. In addition, these Splunk resources might help you understand and implement this use case: