How to create a dashboard

The Elastic dashboard is an incredibly versatile tool for displaying data in a dynamic and visual format. This page will provide a basic breakdown of the dashboard creation screen and a simple example.

Accessing the Dashboards

1. From the navigation menu on the left, browse to the Dashboard section under Analytics.
   
2. On the top right, select Create dashboard.
   
3. The screen will display a blank dashboard in which visualizations can be created and adjusted.
   

Visualization Workspace Overview

1. You can add a new visualization to the dashboard by selecting Create visualization.
   
   
   
2. Index Selection - Before drilling into a dataset, you must first select the associated index. This is done with this drop-down menu.
   
3. Search bar - The search bar utilizes KQL query operations, which allows for auto-complete and suggestion-based functionality.
   
4. Field Selection - This section displays the individual fields available for aggregation. You can refine the listing from the search and filter field at the top. Selecting a single field will display a sampling of available data. Pressing the symbol will move the field into the dashboard workspace.
   
5. Date Range - This option allows selecting a timeframe from which to query documents. The range can be absolute (between dates) or relative (i.e., last 30 days)
   
6. Visualization Type - This drop-down will display available visualization types such as tables, areas, circles, and bar graphs. If a new chart is incompatible with the already selected data field, a symbol will appear next to it, stating that Elastic will remove the incompatible field.
   
   
7. Workspace - The central section of the dashboard creation screen is the workspace, where Elastic will generate graphs from the selected criteria. Dragging a field to the middle will auto-create a chart and display further graph type selections below it. Adding more fields will update the graph with different suggested graph types.
   
8. Layer Settings - Once the needed data fields have been selected, the layer setting section will populate. This includes function, display name, value format, and color. Selecting a field will allow you to modify the presentation.
    

Visualization Example - Pie Chart

1. In this example, we will be creating a simple pie chart detailing the median total purchase price compared by gender. From viewing the documents from Discover, I know that I need the customer_gender and taxless_total_price fields to create this graph.
   
2. The first step is to set the Index and date range. In this case, I've selected the Kibana eCommerce index from the last year.
   
3. Next, I will drag and drop the two required fields:
   
   customer_gender
   taxless_total_price
   
   ... to the dashboard workspace
   Elastic will automatically generate a graph based on the presented data fields. From here, the display can be adjusted and refined.
4. The next step will be to remove the Count of records field from the Layer settings section on the right. It is not needed for this type of graph.
   
5. Next, I will select the Top values of customer_gender from the horizontal axis and change the display name to just Genders.
   
   
6. We are doing the same for the Median of products.taxless_price by changing it simply to Total Purchase. Since we will be working with the Median price, the function does not need to change.
   
   
   
7. Finally, we will select the Pie chart from the Visualization type section at the top.
   
8. At this point, we have a pie chart that shows the percentage of slices instead of the price. You can correct this by selecting the Labels icon next to the visualization type drop-down and changing it to Show value.
   
   
9. The graph is now displaying as we would expect and can be saved by selecting Save and return at the top right.
   
10. The new visualization will now appear in the dashboard view. It is modified or titled from the gear icon on the top right or repositioned by dragging the tile itself.