Basic dashboards and reporting

Note: This article applies to Splunk Enterprise and Splunk Cloud. 

How dashboards help you share insights

A dashboard is a collection of views made up of panels representing your search results. Each panel presents the results of a search, often as a visualization, such as a table, chart, graph, or a custom-built option. You have two dashboard editor options, Classic Dashboards or Dashboard Studio, to create and edit dashboards in Splunk. The editors give you access to an editing user interface (UI) and a Simple XML source code editor for Classic Dashboards, and a JSON source code editor for Dashboard Studio.

SPL supports many types of commands that can clarify the lens through which you see your data. For example, you can use transforming commands in your SPL queries to build statistics and advanced visualizations.

• Dashboard: A user interface associated with an app that has one or more panels that show search results.

• Dashboard editor: An interactive editor available from Splunk Web to create and edit dashboards. There are two dashboard editors: Classic Dashboards, our original tool using Simple XML, or Dashboard Studio, our UI-driven experience with customizable layouts and advanced visualization tools.

• Panel: An individual element on a dashboard that holds one or more search results.

• Simple XML: Simple XML source code defines dashboard and form structure, elements, and behavior. Use the Dashboard Editor to build or edit dashboards in Simple XML.

• Views: Use views to display information or control some aspect of a search or another view.

• Visualization: Visual representation of search results from inline searches, pivots, or reports.

• Prebuilt panels: A type of panel that can be shared among various dashboards.

• Transforming commands: A type of search command that orders the results into a data table that can be used for statistics and visualization.

How to get started with dashboards

• Print the Dashboards Quick Reference Guide. A great item to print and keep on your desk to reference when you need answers. The Splunk Dashboards Quick Reference Guide provides an at-a-glance view of Splunk data visualizations and dashboards.

• Transform an existing report. Use the transforming commands to adapt the results of a noisy report into a rich visualization.

• Enrich an existing visualization. Modify an existing visualization to discover alternative visualizations to express data insights.

• Install the Splunk Dashboard Examples app. The Splunk Dashboard Examples app delivers examples that give you a hands-on way to learn the basic concepts and tools needed to rapidly create rich dashboards using Simple XML.

• Create a dashboard. Populate a dashboard with a set of searches that relate to the same context, or use case.

• Create Dashboards. Click here for a video that shows how to create a dashboard in your Splunk platform.