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Smart View

Smart View pages display graphs and charts of an entity's metrics and events during the time range you select, whether minutes or months past. Unlike dashboards, which you create, Zenoss Cloud provides Smart View pages for every entity in your environment. Smart View pages include information about all the entities on which the anchor entity depends, either in a ranked list of tiles or in an interactive dependency graph. Throughout, AI assistants put the most important graphs and any anomalous metric data front and center. This unique combination of truly relevant information makes Smart View pages the premier tool for investigating infrastructure and service issues.

You can display an entity's Smart View page in the following ways:

  • On a dashboard, click on an entity name in the legend of a metric tile.

  • On a device page in Collection Zone, click the Open in Smart View button.

  • On the main Smart View page, enter an entity name in the search field.

Interface overview

Smart View pages include the following functional areas:

  • The header area, which includes the geometry toggle and the time range controls.

    The header area spans the width of the window, at the top.

  • The anchor card area, which contains the primary subject of a Smart View, the anchor entity.

    In the default view, side-by-side, the anchor card area occupies the left half of the window, below the header.

  • The related entities area, which contains views of the entities on which the anchor entity depends.

    In the default view, side-by-side, the related entities area occupies the right half of the window, below the header.

In addition, a slider control is centered between the anchor card area and the related entities area for resizing them.

Changing the time range

On Smart View pages, the default time range is the past 24 hours. You can change the time range by using the time range controls, by moving the time slider in the primary metric tile, or by clicking an anomaly visualization in the primary metric tile.

The time range determines both which entities are displayed in the related entities area and which data points are used in metric graphs.

Header area

The left side of the header area shows the breadcrumb and the right side includes the controls.

The following image shows the header when the window is large enough to display all the controls easily. As the window shrinks, the controls become truncated but are always available.

Control Action
Show events Display events on the page. By default, the Anchor toggle is selected, which displays the events tile on the anchor card. You can select the Related toggle to display events timelines on each tile in the related entities area.
Split view Select the relative locations of the anchor card and related entities areas. The default view is side-by-side (vertical split) and the alternate view is over-under (horizontal split).
Share Displays a dialog that includes options for the time range for the page and a link copy button.
Refresh A button for refreshing the page immediately and a menu for setting the refresh interval and default behavior, automatic or manual.
Time range The time range controls provide a variety of ways to change the time range whenever you wish. When you change the time range, Zenoss Cloud updates all the model and metric information on the page.

Anchor card area

An anchor card includes the following sections:

  • The top, with information about the anchor entity and the time range.

  • The collapsed view of the events tile, which includes the event rainbow, the event timeline, and the control for expanding the events tile.

    Use the events tile to see when events occurred on Collection Zone entities.

  • The primary metric tile, with a graph of the metric and a time slider.

    Like the time range controls in the header, the time slider in this tile controls the time range of all Smart View graphs.

  • Secondary metric tiles, with controls to promote a metric to the anchor entity tile and to vote on its relevance.

  • A grid containing tiles of sparkline graphs of all the metrics that are associated with the anchor entity.

You can use the crowdsourced voting icons to influence the sort order of a metric. Use the thumbs-up icon to increase the relevance and the thumbs-down icon to decrease the relevance.

Anomaly shield icons

Anomaly shield icons, at the immediate left of metric names, indicate whether a metric is a key metric and if it is a key metric, its anomaly status.

Icon Meaning
The metric is not a key metric
The metric is a key metric and either there is not enough historical data to train a model or no anomalies have been detected during the current time range
The metric is a key metric and anomalies have been detected during the current time range

Typically, the primary metric tile contains a key metric because an AI assistant prioritizes the most important metrics.

Events tile

An events tile summarizes the events associated with an anchor entity during the current time range and is an optional feature of the anchor card area. Use the anchor toggle to display or hide an events tile. An events tile facilitates exploration of questions such as the following:

  • Are specific event classes or event names correlated with performance metric changes?
  • Is Collection Zone configured to take action when problem conditions are present?
  • Does monitoring need to be adjusted?
Events tile, collapsed view

The default view of the events tile includes the events timeline and the event severity rainbow.

  • The events timeline represents each event that occurred during the current time range with a thin vertical line.
  • The severity rainbow shows the total number of each event severity in the current time range. The rainbow is interactive—select a severity to include or exclude events. The severity rainbow controls the display of events on the anchor card and all related entity tiles.
Events tile, expanded view

The expanded view of the events tile adds a column chart and a doughnut chart.

The column chart shows events grouped by the category you select (default is event severity). To create a column chart, Zenoss Cloud divides the current time range into 24 equal periods and then represents the total number of events during each period with separate columns (or no column).

The doughnut chart provides a proportional view of event severities during the current time range. When you select the detailed info icon of an entry in the doughnut chart legend, the latest event of that type is displayed.

Primary metric tile

On Smart View pages, the primary metric tile is the first metric tile on the anchor card during the current time range.

Here is an example primary metric tile:

An AI assistant selects a metric for the primary metric tile by considering the following factors:

  1. The number of upvotes a metric has received, from others in your organization, from you, and from other users in other organizations.
  2. For key metrics, whether the data was anomalous during the current time range.

The metric with the highest score is placed in the primary metric tile, and the remaining metrics are arranged in descending order below the primary metric tile.

When you select the show events checkbox, Smart View displays events on all metric tiles on the anchor card.

Editing metric dictionary entries

You can edit the dictionary entry of a metric from the primary metric tile.

  1. In the tile header, click the vertical ellipsis ().

  2. On the menu, click Metric Dictionary.

  3. Use the metric dictionary editor to edit the entry.

A related entities area displays one of two views of the entities on which an anchor entity depends:

  • Tile view, which contains one tile for each entity on which an anchor entity depends. Tile view is the default view.
  • Dependency view, which contains an interactive, hierarchical graph of dependent entities.

If an anchor entity does not have any dependent entities during the current time range, the related entities area is empty. Note that tile views may include a parent entity, but dependency views do not.

Tile view

A tile view displays a grid of individual tiles containing information about each entity on which an anchor entity depends. The tiles are arranged by relevance to the anchor entity, from top to bottom and left to right.

The metrics within each tile use the same time range as all other metrics on a Smart View page.

Use the action button to make an entity in the related entities area the anchor entity, which moves it to the anchor card. When you move your pointer over the area to the left of the action button, Zenoss Cloud displays the upvote and downvote icons, which promote or demote an entity's relevance to the anchor entity.

Dependency view

A dependency view displays an interactive, hierarchical graph of the entities on which an anchor entity depends. The initial display shows the anchor entity and its immediate dependencies. When you move your pointer over an entity's box, Zenoss Cloud displays information about the entity.

Each entity is represented by a box that contains the following:

  • A computer icon, in the middle of the box.
  • An event status icon, adjacent to the computer icon, if any open event associated with the entity during the current time range is severity Critical, Error, or Warning.
  • An action button, in the upper-right corner. The button is a white circle when the entity is the anchor entity.
  • The entity name, at the bottom.

To discover additional dependencies, click the query trigger (down arrow symbol) below a dependency. Zenoss Cloud queries its database and displays the dependencies it finds, if any, or removes the query trigger.

When you click an entity's action button, Zenoss Cloud updates the anchor card with information about that entity. The dependency view remains anchored on the entity that was displayed in the anchor card when the dependency view was opened.

ZR INDEX numbers

Each related entity tile includes an AI-calculated score, its ZR INDEX number, at the bottom of the tile. Zenoss Cloud uses the numbers to arrange the tiles from most relevant to least relevant during the current time range. When the time range changes, the arrangement of the tiles is recalculated and changed as needed.

When you hover your pointer over a ZR INDEX number, Zenoss Cloud displays a summary of the factors that played a role in calculating the number.

The following factors are used in calculating ZR INDEX numbers:

  1. Are there any critical or error events during the current time range? If so, critical events are weighted three times more heavily than error events.
  2. Were any anomalies detected during the current time range?
  3. Has the entity been upvoted or downvoted?
  4. How many nodes are between the entity and the anchor entity (in the directed acyclic graph of the anchor entity)?

The Zenoss Cloud AI judges each factor to calculate ZR INDEX numbers. In theory, a ZR INDEX number could be 100, but scores greater than 40 are rare. Multiple downvotes can result in negative ZR INDEX numbers.