[UX Design] Drilldown functionality for dashboards

[btzeng]

Background

We'd want to enable drilldowns that supports dashboard-to-dashboard workflows that persist user context i.e., a user could apply filters as well as controls, subsets, etc. into a later dashboard. An example workflow might be something like:

User story

1. A devops engineer/analyst is looking at a high-level, client side-centric dashboard.
2. While investigating, the engineer/analyst notices a spike in latency metrics and filters to some geography (or device type or something similar) and then filters to some specific dates.
3. The engineer/analyst uses the drilldown feature to view a latency-specific dashboard with the filters pre-applied thus reserving the context of the previous investigation/filters.

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Flow structure

From Dashboard to

1. Dashboard
2. External website (URL)

From Dashboard panel to

1. Dashboard
2. External website (URL)

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Wireframe

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Detailed design

Design 1: drilldown list
Step 1. Create and configure drilldown as a visualization type in visualize.
Step 2. Add drilldown list to dashboard.

Config drilldown(s) as a visualization type

Drilldown to another dashboard

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Design 2: drilldown from dashboard panel
Create and configure drilldown directly in the visualization panel.

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References

Issue: #1248

[ahopp]

Thanks for opening this design exploration @btzeng! I think we should consider how dynamic we want the drilldowns to be. For example, how dynamic and configurable should the URL passthroughs be?

[btzeng]

Yes @ahopp.
For creating URL input, I'm thinking Single click > Enter URL > Select variable (optional).
Also we need to brainstorm the steps between dashboard-to-dashboard, dashboard-to-discover, discover-to-discover. I will create an IA for this.

[btzeng]

@ahopp added flow diagram and wireframe to the post.
Another flow we need to define is Discover-to-Discover. This is a useful and common feature that allows the users to drill down within discover page.

[ahopp]

@btzeng love the direction here.

I think there is another enhancement we can consider is a drilldown visualization. I think something analogous can be found in Grafana. In the "dashboard list" visualization, a user can define a list of links (both to Dashboards and to external URLs). See below;

In this case, each row represents a link to another dashboard and could be very useful in providing quick and easy access to a fast hit list of related dashboards and links.

[mmguero]

Came here from another (more or less duplicate) issue (#976). The bit in @btzeng 's comment above about Select variable (optional) may be a little bit limiting, if you mean passing through just one single variable. For me, if we could allow the user to pass both a variable as well as the currently-selected time range (e.g., start/stop query time frame with UNIX seconds/milliseconds or ISO format or whatever) would be best. Thanks!

[btzeng]

Thanks for the feedback @mmguero. When configuring the drilldown by providing the external url, @ahopp we should pass both selected variable and current selected time range.
@ahopp, please see below steps for drilldown config (external url)

1. Enter URL. (the url accepts variable) 2. Select variable i.e. event.value, event.key, etc. 3. Save the value and complete drilldown config.

[razi284]

I would like to add a use case I stumbled on today, where a drill-down is required on a table visualization, but the link should include multiple variables from the clicked line.
So for example, if the table has 3 columns: host, region and status I would like to click on the row, and go to a discover/dashboard which is filtered by both the host and the region of that row.

[ghost]

Dear developers/colleagues, first of all, many thanks for your commitment and the great product that you have created and are keeping!

I'm aware that everything is associated with work and time, but is it possible to estimate when the first version will be usable, even if only roughly with regard to the drilldown feature?

All the best!

PS: I hope I'm in the right place here

[ahopp]

@netimate we don't have a timeline for this feature...yet. But I do think it's be on the top of the list (feels high impact relative to the dev effort). We'll update this issues once we have someone working on it - or if someone in the broader community start working on it!

[elfisher]

Can we add labels for "roadmap" and what version of OpenSearch Dashboards this is targeting? I can then add it to the project roadmap accordingly.

[btzeng]

@ahopp Do you know which release we're targeting for this feature?

[elfisher]

@ahopp do you know what version this is targeting?

[ghost]

This feature would be an absolute added value for the user experience! It would be great if we had a rough planning of the planned release +1

[joshuarrrr]

removing roadmap label until we can get an answer

[ahopp]

@dagneyb Can you provide some guidance on prioritization here? We previously punted this and didn't get it prioritized, but I still think it's a good feature to fund - I still think it should be on the top of the list given the high impact relative to the dev effort.

[avocadio]

@ahopp @dagneyb If I may, there is several level of complexity here, and one feature that analyst 'lost' is elastic/kibana#8042 ( implemented via elastic/kibana#12560 ) and would heavily help with the pivoting of data with third party tools such as:

• CyberChef
• arkime
• OpenCTI
• Security Onion

Could it be considered to split the feature into smaller subset allowing several release of the drilldown feature?