Using BMC Helix Dashboards

To create custom dashboards for BMC Helix Continuous Optimization in BMC Helix Dashboards

For BMC Helix Continuous Optimization, you can configure custom dashboards, panels, and queries to quickly start creating visualizations to get an insight of your IT infrastructure. As a tenant administrator or an editor, you need to build queries in panels in BMC Helix Dashboards to fetch data from the data source. You can build multiple queries with different query types in a panel. However, you cannot change the data source for each query in a panel. If you want to change the data source, you must create a new panel. You can also select a visualization type for the panel. 

1. Log in to BMC Helix Portal as a capacity planner.
   Note: Ensure that the Editor role is assigned to the capacity planner user.
2. Click the BMC Helix Dashboards tile.
3. On the left navigation pane, do one of the following actions:
   
   • Hover the mouse over the Create icon  and then click Dashboard.
   • Hover the mouse over the Dashboards icon , click Browse, and then click the New Dashboard button.
4. On the New dashboard page, click Add new panel.
5. In the Query section, select the BMC Helix data source for the query.
6. In the Query Type field, select one of the following query types to fetch the relevant BMC Helix Continuous Optimization data:
   • Metrics
   • Optimize Data marts
   • Service Risk and Mitigation
7. In the Query field, add the query. This field changes according to the query type that you select.
8. (optional) To add an additional query, click + Query, and specify the query options as described in the previous step.
9. Select the required visualization type.
10. Enter a name for the dashboard, select a folder, and click Save. The new dashboard is displayed with the relevant data.

To visualize the Continuous Optimization data based on metrics

Use the Metric query type to fetch the performance metrics data in your environment.

1. Add a new panel and select Query Type as Metrics.
2. Configure the following parameters, and save the query:

To visualize the Continuous Optimization data based on data marts 

Use the Optimize Data marts query type to fetch the capacity data in BMC Helix Continuous Optimization.

1. Add a new panel and select Query Type as Optimize Data marts.

2. Configure the following parameters, and save the query:
   

(Optional) Filter data mart contents by using variables

Variables act as placeholders and get values at run time. They can be based on any data source. You can use them to filter data mart contents. For example, if you want to create a variable to filter the content of a data mart column named Cluster, perform these tasks:

Task 1: Find the data mart ID and internal column name

1. Open the dashboard that you created for visualizing the data mart content.
2. Expand the data mart table title and click Edit.
3. Note down the data mart ID as shown in the following image:
   
   
   
   
4. On the Transform tab, note down the internal column name as shown in the following image:
   
   

Task 2: Create the variable 

1. On a custom dashboard, click Dashboard settings .
2. On the navigation bar, click Variables.
3. Click Add new variable and specify the following values:
   
   1. Name: Internal name of the column to be filtered. For example, clustername.
   2. Label: Label to be used as a display name for the filter. For example, Cluster.
   3. Data source: BMC Helix API
   4. Query options: 
      1. On the Path tab, select POST and specify the URL of the API to retrieve data for the filter by using the column name and data mart ID.
         Example: /opt/api/v1/datamartservice/datamarts/<data mart ID>/filters/<column name>
      2. On the Body tab, specify the filters and options to customize the API response.
         Example: {"filters":[],"options":{"pagenum":0,"pagesize":-1}}
      3. On the Fields tab, specify the values that you want to filter. For example, specify these options to filter by column ID:
         1. In the Field box, specify values.id.
         2. Select JSONata.
            You can view the list of IDs under Preview of values.
   5. Refresh: On dashboard load
   6. Sort: Disabled
   7. Selection options: Select both the options.
4. Click Apply. The new variable is created and displayed at the top of the data mart table. You can use it to filter the data mart column.

Visualizing the time series data of BMC Helix Continuous Optimization

You can use the BMC Time Series Forecast visualization plug-in to view the predictive data of BMC Helix Continuous Optimization on a dashboard. The dashboard includes a line chart that shows the prediction data from data sources, such as BMC Helix Continuous Optimization and confidence bands. You can select a period of prediction and show or hide the confidence bands.

For information about how to configure this plug-in, see Visualizing predictive time series data in panels.

Cross-launch from BMC Helix Continuous Optimization to BMC Helix Dashboards

With the integration of BMC Helix Continuous Optimization with BMC Helix Dashboards, you can navigate to BMC Helix Dashboards by using the cross-launch option from the Views section of BMC Helix Continuous Optimization. The cross-launch option is available on the details page of the systems that are monitored by the PATROL Agent. You can view the device metrics data in BMC Helix Dashboards with this feature. This option is not available for systems that are not monitored by PATROL Agent.

To view the option for your devices in BMC Helix Continuous Optimization, ensure that BMC Helix Operations Management, BMC Helix Dashboards, and BMC Helix Discovery are available on the same tenant. Ensure that you have the permissions to view the device metric details in BMC Helix Dashboards.