Introduction to Dashboards Webinar Q & A

We were very pleased to receive a lot of positive feedback and many interesting questions during the Q&A portion of the webinar and we’re happy to reproduce both the questions and answers here.

Q1: Does someone need an existing management pack to view data in dashboard?  Or, can I build this “on the fly”?

Like SCOM itself, Dashboards by Savision will only show you information about classes and objects that are contained in management packs that you have imported into Operations Manager.  As such, before you build a custom dashboard you will have to have imported the management packs that contain the definitions of the objects you wish to present in your dashboard.

You are certainly able, however, to build custom dashboards that update themselves dynamically as new objects are discovered into SCOM.  For example, if you add a heatmap containing the health state of all SQL Servers into your custom dashboard, as new SQL Servers are added to your infrastructure they will also appear in the custom dashboard.

Q2: Can we configure audible alerts on dashboards?

Currently you cannot configure audible alerts in Dashboards by Savision.  Audible alerts on state changes are, however, included in Live Maps, Savision’s solution for business service management.

Q3: Are the dashboards dynamic?  That is, can they pull all instances of a class vs defining each instance individually?

Yes, the dashboards are dynamic.  Widgets such as “Active Alerts”, “Heat Map”, and “Performance Graph” are configured with a SCOM class instead of individual objects and will then pick up and report on any objects contained within that class when the dashboard is viewed.

Q4: Is it possible to mouse over an object on a heat map and pop up a small square where I could see additional information such as a performance graph?

We don’t currently offer this as a feature, but we’re happy to add it to our list of feature requests.

Our development is driven by what customers want to see so we’re always happy to receive requests.  If you have an idea for a feature, please drop us a line at support@savision.com or visit support.

Q5: Can dashboards pull data from other sources, or is it exclusive to the SCOM databases?  For example, could I pull information from an independent SQL database?

Currently Dashboards only presents information from the SCOM databases.  However, we are happy to add this to our list of feature requests.

Our development is driven by what customers want to see so we’re always happy to receive requests.  If you have an idea for a feature, please drop us a line at support@savision.com or visit support.

Q6: Can we change colors and styles?

The current version does not allow you to change colours or styles.  However, we do have plans to allow custom theming and include themes other than blue out of the box, including a colour blind friendly theme.

Q7:Have you mentioned where these dashboards are stored?

The definitions of custom dashboards are stored in the SCOM database.  When you install Dashboards by Savision, we ask you to import a management pack into Operations Manager.  The management pack includes, among other things, a SCOM class representing a dashboard definition.  When you save a dashboard, we actually “discover” an instance of the dashboard definition class into SCOM.

This means that you don’t have to worry about setting up any external storage for Dashboards by Savision.

Q8: In the future, will we be able to pull information from multiple management groups in a single dashboard?

Yes, the ability to present a unified view of multiple management groups is definitely on our roadmap

Q9: Is there an installation guide available? What are the prerequisites?

Yes, an installation guide is provided on our download site.

Dashboards by Savision installs itself as an IIS web application.  The installation guide goes into more details, but in general you’ll need a domain user account with read privileges on both the SCOM operational and data warehouse databases as well as a network route from the web server to the databases and the SCOM SDK.  You’ll also need to import our management pack into SCOM.

You should be able to install the product and have it up and running within five minutes.

Q10: When will the new version of Live Maps become available? And, will it support backwards compatibility for views?

We are timing the release of the latest versions of both Dashboards by Savision and Live Maps Unity with Microsoft Ignite.  The latest versions will be available the week of May 4th.

The latest version of Live Maps is backwards compatible with views created in previous versions.

Q11: Is it worth installing the current version available? Or should I wait until Ignite?

We’d suggest that you download and install the current version, there are plenty of features and system dashboards that you will be able to make use of right away.

We’d suggest that you download and install the current version, there are plenty of features and system dashboards that you will be able to make use of right away.

Installing the upgrade, when it becomes available, shouldn’t take more than a minute or so and it will be backwards compatible with custom dashboards created in the previous versions.

Further, we intend to continue iterating on Dashboards by Savision and delivering new versions.  We have a long list of features we’d like to see in the product and we have had some terrific feature requests from beta users.

Q12: Can we publish to sharepoint, or configure an autologin account (SCOM read only user) for a shared page?

Currently we only support a scenario where a user logs in with their credentials – or credentials they have been given that have access to SCOM.  Providing a secure way to handle credentials within a SharePoint web part and providing the ability to use Windows authentication is on our roadmap.

Q13: Is there any integration with SCCM?

Currently we do not provide integration with SCCM.  Moving forward, it is our goal to integrate Savision products, including Dashboards by Savision and Live Maps Unity with other products in the System Center space as well as other monitoring products.  Live Maps Unity currently integrates with System Center Service Manager and the next release will also integrate with ServiceNow.  Going forward, you’ll also see integration with products such as SolarWinds.

Q14: Will Dashboards be able to replace the SCOM (Web) console in the near future?

One of the downsides of the SCOM web console is its reliance on Silverlight.  It will be interesting to see how that changes in the 2016 version, especially given the recent news that Google Chrome will remove support for Silverlight by the end of the year.

In current and future versions of Dashboards by Savision, you will certainly be able to create custom dashboards that replicate much of the functionality available in the current web console.  We’re not sure if we’ll be able to completely replace it – certainly one area we haven’t even talked about is the ability to run “Tasks” – but we’re always open to feature requests.

Q15: How do you set up Dashboards? Do you need an extra server?

Dashboards by Savision installs as an IIS web application.  You don’t need an additional server for it, indeed you can even install it on the same server where you’ve installed the SCOM web console.  A complete installation guide can be found on our downloads page.

Q16: How does it scale to big (5000+ agents) environments? Will it be possible to combine several management groups?

Dashboards by Savision has been installed in large SCOM environments and performs quite well.  System dashboards load in under thirty seconds.  Of course, the performance of Dashboards by Savision is dependent on how well tuned your SCOM environment is and the underlying hardware that runs it.

The ability to present a unified view of multiple management groups is on our roadmap.

 Q17: What extra steps do you need to take if you want to view a dashboard on your tablet outside of your organization?

The only requirement is that the web server where Dashboards by Savision is installed must be visible to the tablet.  We strongly recommend that you only ever access Dashboards by Savision over SSL.

The web pages running on your tablet, mobile phone, etc., only ever communicate with the web server.  Communication to the Operations Manager SDK, operational database, and data warehouse database occur from the web server itself.

Q18: What about Operational Insights and Dashboards?

While we don’t know yet the direction Microsoft is going to take with Operational Insights, moving forward, it is our goal to integrate Savision products, including Dashboards by Savision and Live Maps Unity with other products in the System Center space as well as other monitoring products.  Depending on customer demand, this may also include Operational Insights.  Currently, however, Dashboards by Savision only connects to SCOM.

Q19: Do you need Live Maps to run Dashboards?

No, you do not need to have Live Maps in order to run Dashboards.  You can access all of the system dashboards and create custom dashboards without having Live Maps installed.

However, customers of Live Maps  will have access to premium features within Dashboards by Savision, such as unlimited custom dashboards, and Dashboards has the ability to display information generated by Live Maps Unity such as the business service dashboard and service models.

Q20: I installed the free version of Dashboards into our environment. I can monitor Active Directory, SQL, IIS and Computer Health. I cannot monitor the Exchange environment because it requires the Exchange 2013 MP. Our environment is Exchange 2010. Is it possible to monitor Exchange 2010?

Currently Dashboards by Savision only includes a system dashboard for Exchange 2013.  Depending on customer demand, we may also develop a system dashboard for Exchange 2010, however it is not currently on our roadmap.