Category: Dashboards

SAP Focused Run dashboards in alert management

The SAP Focused Run Alert Management application allows us to create a custom dashboard that can help us to report on alerts as per our custom alert reporting needs.

To create a custom dashboard, in the Alert Management App, click on the +sign (Add Custom Page) on the navigation panel.

Upon clicking on Add Custom Page , a blank pane is displayed along with the setup panel to its right.

The first step in setup is to give a name to your dashboard. For this click on Rename button in the setup area Page Management.

In the pop-up provide the name for your dashboard.

You can also give a meaningful Icon to your dashboard that will be displayed in the navigation panel. For this provide the sap icon name in the Icon field. To get a list of available icons you can also look in the SAP Icons link which takes you to the Icon explorer.

The next is to specify the grid layout (Number of rows and columns)in the view management section of setup area. By default it is 1×1 which means you can add only 1 dashboard. If you want to add more dashboards, accordingly you can adjust the grid.

Then you need to select a view, based on what you want to show in the dashboard, by selecting from the list of available views. You can select a view by simply dragging and dropping in the dashboard layout.

In this example we have selected 4 views in the 2×2 grid layout.

  • Top Open Alerts affecting most no. of Managed Objects
  • Open Alerts by Monitoring Usecase
  • Open Alerts by duration
  • Open Alerts by source

By default all the dashboards in your custom dashboard will use the Global Scope, the scope inherited from the scope you selected while opening the Alert Management App. You can also select a custom scope for your dashboard. For example in this case we want to filter for all production system alerts. For this click on the setup button of the dashboard you want to specify the scope.

Then in the setup area, in the scope selection, select your custom scope from the drop down list. Note: You must have already created your custom scope in the Scope management section.

Once you have finalized your dashboard you can publish your dashboard by marking it as public so that others can also use the dashboard.

However, by default the public custom dashboard is not added in the navigation panel of all other users. To be able to view the dashboard a user has to again click on the + sign in the navigation panel, and then in setup area select the public page.

<< This blog was originally posted on SAP Focused Run Guru by Manas Tripathy (Simac). Repost done with permission. >>

SAP Focused Run OCC dashboard

OCC dashboards are the most flexible form of dashboarding in SAP Focused Run. It is completely up to you to define any dashboard based on the available data.

The explanation below will give a quick introduction on how to setup a dashboard with as example a line graph with CPU for one system and amount of short dumps per hour for that system in a bar chart.

Set up new dashboard

Start the OCC dashboard Fiori tile:

Click the add a new dashboard icon on the left:

Now open on the right hand side icon the personalization. Here you can change the default 2 by 1 layout if want as well:

Now per gadget, select the personalization. First choose the type of graph, then select the query details:

Add the query by clicking the Plus sign:

Give the legend a name and press the Change query button:

First select the data source. In this example we choose system monitoring. Select next your system, and select the metric (in this case CPU). Don’t forget to save on top of the personalization!

We repeat for the other gadget, but now select short dumps per last hour as example:

Test your dashboard to see if the results are according to your expectation.

Make dashboard public

If you are happy with your dashboard, you can make it public. To do so, go to the personalization options:

Set the selected page to public, select a proper icon, and rename the default user-edit to a proper name and don’t forget to Save.

Other users can now add you dashboard from their UI personalization menu by clicking the Add Public Page and add your dashboard:

ABAP short dump trend analysis

We can use SAP Focused Run OCC Dashboards to build a ABAP Dump Trend Analysis dashboard.

Using OCC Dashboard we can use the data provider for System Monitoring to pull the data of Short Dumps per day metric in to a trend chart.

In the OCC Dashboard app you can create a new dashboard page by clicking on Add Custom Page in the navigation panel.

By default your new page will be named as custom_page, you can rename your page by clicking on Rename in the settings section and then providing a new name.

In the View Management section of the settings area you can modify the grid layout. By default you have 2 columns in 1 row. In this example we will change to 1 X 1 to keep just the ABAP Dump Trend Analysis dashboard. (Note: we can add a dashboard to each grid in the layout).

Now for adding the dashboard to the pane we just created, we click on the settings button for that pane.

Then in settings area, under View Personalization –> Render we select the graph type. In this case we want to perform a trend chart so we select Line Chart.

Now we need to create a query for the chart that would provide the data for our graph. For this in the Query section we click on the + sign to add a query.

Now in the Query Section, for the newly added row you provide a name under Legend and then click on the change button to start editing the query.

In the Query Editor screen select the data provider System Monitoring.

Now we navigate to the Scope Selection tab to select the managed systems for which the dashboard should display data. In this example we selected System Type as Application Server ABAP and IT Admin role as Production to select all ABAP production systems.

Now in the Default tab , under Extended SID select any ABAP system and then under Metrics tab select the metric Number of Short Dumps (Today). Click on Apply button to activate the selection.

Now you can see the ABAP Dumps trend lines for the selected scope of managed systems in the graph.

Note: By default a graph for System Monitoring data provider will select Auto resolution of data which will show the data for today with hourly frequency.

You can change the resolution in the Time Range Section in the Settings area. For example here we set Period for last 30 days as “l30d” and Granularity for every day or daily as “d”.

Note: OCC Dashboard graphs will always average out the data as per the granularity set for the graph w.r.t actual collection frequency of the selected metric. For instance if the metric Number of Short dumps (Today) has a hourly frequency and we show the daily data in the graph, then the value shown in the graph will be average of all hourly data collected by the metric for that day, which will of course be different from the actual final daily count. Hence to ensure data shown on graph is accurate, ensure that the Number of Short Dumps (Today) metric has a daily frequency. Then the granularity of the graph and the metric data collection frequency being exactly same, both will have the exact same and accurate data.

To know more abut OCC Dashboards and all possibilities with it you can refer to SAP Documentation here.

<< This blog was originally posted on SAP Focused Run Guru by Frank Umans and Manas Tripathy (Simac). Repost done with permission. >>

SAP Focused Run operation dashboard

With Focused Run a dashboarding framework is available called Operation Dashboard. This enhancement comes under the Advanced Analytics & Intelligence (AAI) functionality of Focused Run.

With Operation Dashboard you can configure a 3 level drilldown dashboard to track the current situation of monitoring and alerting in the areas of System Monitoring and Real User Monitoring.

Currently you can track metrics and alerts only from areas of System Monitoring and Real User Monitoring.

Views in Operations Dashboard

Operation Dashboard provides 3 types of view to provide a consolidated view of the current status of monitoring and alerting.

  1. Analytics Map: Consolidate monitors to a specific region on the world map. The region is colour coded to the aggregated monitoring status of the monitors included. Aggregation uses worst case rule i.e The colour of the region is green only if all the involved monitors are in green.

2. Tile View: Shows the consolidated monitoring status of a specific Scenario/System/Managed Object. Aggregation uses worst case rule.

3. List Deatils View: Shows the list of involved monitors.

The above three views are linked automatically to eachother to enable the drill down functionality. That is, if you click on a perticular region which is rated in the world map view, you will get the correspoding systems/componenets for that region in the tiles view and the corresponding monitoring metrics in the list view.

Operation Dashboard Setup

To access Operations Dashboards click on Operations Dasboard tile under Advanced Analytics & Intelligence section in the Focused Run Launchpad.

Step 1: Create a new Operation Dashboard

Create a new Operations Dashboard by clicking on Add Custom Page in the navigation pannel of Operations Dashboard app.

Step 2: Name your dashboard

When you create a new dashboard, the dashboard setup are will appear on the right hand side of your screen. Click on the rename button as shown below.

Step3: Configure layout

You can configure the layout of your dashboard in a Grid format. Each grid in the layout will hold a view of your dashboard. As we have 3 types of views you can form a layout of 3 grids. To configure the grid layout click on the Grid button in the setup area – View Management section:

In the pop-up you can drag and drop to form a Grid layout:

Step4: Select monitoring content

To customize your Operations Dashboard, you first need to select the monitoring content as the source of data from either of System Monitoring or Real User Monitoring or both. For this navigate to Page Personalization area.

In the Default Settings area you can

  1. Select or deselect monitoring area (System Monitoring/ Real User Monitoring)
  2. Select or deselect metric or alerts
  3. Select or deselect category (Availability/Exception/Performance)
  4. Alert Severity ( Alerts of same or more severity are included in the scope of the dashboard)

Step 5: Create scenarios

In Order to link systems/ components to a particular region in the world map you need to create scenarios and link them to specific regions in the world map.

In this step you create named Scenarios or Regions to which you can later on tag your monitors. For this navigate to the Content Settings Area , Custom Scenarios Settings. To create a new scenario click on the + sign.

In the pop-up you can directly enter the country name or code or you can click on search to search for your respective country/region and it’s code.

You can see the list of all scenarios you created in the Custom Scenarios section.

Step 6: Add monitors and tag monitors

In this step you add systems/components and tag them to specific scenarios you created in the previous step.

For this navigate to Content Settings area, Data Source Settings and click on the + sign.

In the pop-up screen select the system/component you want to add and accept to continue.

Now back in the Data Sources list select the scenario for the system/component you just added.

Now your Operations Dashboard is ready.

  1. In View 1: World Map, the regions are coded as per the aggregated rating of all systems/componenets tagged to a specific scenario in the Data Sources settings in Step 6.
  2. In View 2: Tiles View, by default shows the Region/scenarios aggregated rating in tiles. In this view you can drill down to aggregated rating for each system/Compoenent/monitor by simply clicking on the tile. (For instance below shows the Tile view of the systems in Germany shown in the image 2 of this blog.

3. In View 3: the List View, shows the monitors for all the system/componenet shown in Tiles view, that is, if you drill down in Tiles View, accordingly filtered monitors are shown in Tiles view.

<< This blog was originally posted on SAP Focused Run Guru by Manas Tripathy. Repost done with permission. >>

SAP Focused Run tactical dashboard

ultiple systems. Items that are part of the tactical dashboard is database backup status, performance, logged on users, software maintenance status.

Questions that will be answered in this blog are:

  • How to use the Focused Run tactical dashboards?
  • How to fine tune the tactical dashboards?
  • How to setup your own tactical dashboard?

Tactical dashboards usage

To start the tactical dashboard, click the corresponding Fiori tile:

You now reach the tactical dashboard overview screen:

By clicking the Expand Group icon at the right you get first level of details:

By clicking the tile you are interested in you get the details.

Examples are hardware resources for current week and last month:

Dialog response times:

Amount of logged on users:

And software maintenance status for detailed components:

An alternative for manageming software components is via Security and Configuration management. More details be found in this detailed blog. The tactical dashboard is nice for 1 system. The configuration validation tool is useful for overview of components across multiple systems.

Configuration of the tactical dashboard

By clicking the personalization button top right:

you will reach the configuration screen. Here you can add and delete systems from the overview:

And you can set the view properties and thresholds for each of the categories:

This fine-tuning you do as per your companies needs. By clicking on the Visibility symbol, you can hide an aspect from your overview. Like above the Database backup was put to invisible.

Creating your own tactical dashboard

You can create your own tactical dashboard for your own specific needs. We will take the example here to make a dedicated dashboard for the backups. Since we want to check daily in the overview if the backups were successful.

Start by clicking top left on the big + symbol to add a new dashboard:

The personalization view screen will open:

Important here are a few things. Set the tick box Public if you want to share this dashboard. Find the keyword for the right SAP icon (use the SAP icons link and read this blog). Rename the dashboard by clicking the Rename button.

Now Save the page. Close the personalization. You are now in the empty screen. Open peronalization again to add the system(s):

Also hide the not needed views. On the left hand side you can immediately see the result updating.

Hint: start with one or two systems only when making a new dashboard. First fine tune what you want to see. When all is ok, add the systems later. If you have a lot of systems, the updating of the left hand screen will be slowing you down.

Don’t forget to save off course.

Using a dashboard created by a different user

If you want to use a dashboard created by a different user, go to the personalization option and select the add page option:

Now you can select any created dashboard, which has been set to public.

If you don’t see the correct dashboard, check with the owner that he made it public.