Getting Started

1. Connect SquaredUp to your data by adding plugins

   Go to Settings and Add plugin.

   What is a plugin?

   Plugins connect SquaredUp to your data sources. There are lots of plugins available and new plugins are made available regularly. New plugins can be added from Settings > Plugins with most plugins needing credentials like an API key, access token or other authentication methods. The articles listed here tell you how to get what you need to connect to SquaredUp.

2. Go to the workspace your plugin created

What is a workspace?

A workspace is a way to divide your organization into categories that make sense for you. You can create workspaces per user, per application, per location, per plugin... it's completely up to you. Each workspace has its own dashboards, monitors and scopes. You never lose access to any data by creating new workspaces, it's just a way of tidying up your work environment, like you would do with folders.

Where do I start?

If you are new here, create a workspace for yourself to experiment. Once you try out the features of SquaredUp you'll get an idea how your actual production workspace should look like. From there, you can come up with your own logic for when a new workspace is needed, for example whenever the data you want to see doesn't really fit into your other workspaces.

3. Create a scope

   What is a scope?

   A scope is the collection of objects you want to see data about. No matter which workspace you're in, you always have access to all objects that have been imported from any plugins when you are defining a scope. Once you have defined a scope, it's only available in the workspace you created it in, so you don't clutter up other workspaces with scopes. You can define as many scopes as you want.

4. Create a dashboard and add some tiles

   Configuring a tile on a dashboard

   These steps describe the simple tile editor. Advanced users might like to try the SQL Analytics editor see SQL Analytics (Beta)

   1. Scope

      Select one of your scopes or create a new one by clicking on the plus sign.

   2. Data Stream

      Select the data stream that answers the question you have about the objects in the scope.

      Which data streams are offered to you depends on the objects in the scope. Every object has been imported from a plugin, together with data streams that make sense for those objects. If you pick a scope that contains objects from different plugins you'll see all data streams from those plugins. If you pick a scope with objects that came from a plugin without data streams you'll only see the pre-installed data streams that are always available in SquaredUp, even if you never imported any data streams.

      Configure Data Stream

      Advanced settings for each data stream can be found by clicking Configure next to the data stream name.

      Filtering

      Data shown can be filtered according to whether data in a column equals or does not equal a specified text or numerical value. Dates can be filtered by Before now or After now, for example to show overdue orders. Text matching is case sensitive.

      Group by

      You can group and aggregate data by column.

      For example, you might Group byservice, choose to Aggregate columnamount with Aggregation typeTotal, to show a table of cost per service.

      Which columns are available depends on the data stream you chose.

      Configuring grouping will enable different visualizations to be displayed, such as bar chart and donut. For example, grouping tickets by channel will allow you to show a donut of how many tickets were logged by email vs web form.

      Sorting

      Data can be sorted by column in ascending or descending order. This sets the default sort order, but users can click on a column heading to sort data in a table on the fly.

      Ticking Top and typing a number will show the top n rows of data.

   3. Visualization

      Select the visualization for your tile. Which visualizations are offered to you depends on the data available, for example Line Graph will only be offered if there is time series data.

      Visualization Settings

      Advanced settings for a visualization can be found by clicking Configure next to the visualization name.

      Bar Chart settings

      X-axis label	Allows you to override the default and enter a label, for example Date or Time.
      Y-axis label	Allows you to override the default and enter a label, for example Tickets or ms.

      Blocks settings

      Sublabel	Choose the sublabel to be shown beneath the main block label
      Columns	Set the number of columns the blocks are displayed in

      Reset - reverts to the default settings.

      Line Graph settings

      Y-axis range	Auto - graph is fitted to the data automatically Percentage - shows 0-100 Fit to data from zero - shows from 0 to the data maximum Custom - allows you to specify the min and max
      Data points	This shows where the data points are on the line. Useful to identify missing points, or detail for changing data.
      Shading	Adds shading below each line.
      X-axis label	Allows you to override the default and enter a label, for example Date or Time.
      Y-axis label	Allows you to override the default and enter a label, for example Tickets or ms.

      Scalar settings

      Source Column	Choose the column to be used. The default is auto, where the column is chosen by the visualization.
      Label	Enter a label, for example Tickets or ms.
      Show formatted value	This shows a simplified value. Toggle to Off to show the raw value. (On by default)

      Reset - reverts to the default settings.

      Table settings

      Sort order	Click and drag a column name to change their order.
      Hide/show	Click on the Toggle visibility eye button to hide or show a column.
      Resizing columns	Use the handle on each column of the table to change the width. Changes will be saved while in the tile editor or in dashboard edit mode.

      Filtering, grouping and sorting of the data can be configured in the data stream advanced settings.

      Reset - reverts to the default settings.

5. Add some monitoring

   How does monitoring work?

   SquaredUp shows you red or green status indicators so you can instantly see if everything is ok or if something needs your attention. The indicators can be seen in several places, for example as dot icons next to a workspace's name or as a highlight color on dashboards.

   Where do I see an overview of my monitoring?

   Go to the Monitoring tab on the left hand side to see which dashboards and tiles related to this workspace have monitoring activated. The health rolls up, which means that if a tile on a dashboard is red, the dashboard turns red. If a dashboard in a workspace is red, the workspace turns red.

   • Upstream workspaces - the health of this workspace rolls up to the upstream workspaces.

   • This workspace - the health of the tiles rolls up to the dashboards, and the health of the dashboards rolls up to this workspace.

   • Downstream workspaces - the health of the downsteam workspaces rolls up to this workspaces.

   Clicking on the workspaces allows you to travel up and down the heirarchy.

   Hovering over the last changed time shows the last known state.

   The Manage dependencies button allows you to add or remove downsteam workspaces, changing which workspace's health roll up to this workspace. This creates (or modifies) a scope called Workspace Dependencies which the downsteam workspace is added to. This tells SquaredUp that this workspace relies on the downsteam workspace for its monitoring. (It will not allow you to create circular dependencies).

   How do I start monitoring?

   Monitoring is configured on a tile level, which means you can add monitoring to any tile on a dashboard.

   When you're editing a tile the monitoring tab, at the top of the screen, lets you switch on and configure monitoring. Monitoring can be based on a state (for objects that come with a state property), a threshold (like "if there are more then 10 new tickets in the last 24 hours switch the status to red"), or a monitor condition script.

   How to configure monitoring

   Monitoring can be switched on in the configuration for a tile.

   You can then choose state, threshold, or script monitoring.

   state	This will use a state field from the tile to determine the monitoring status.
   threshold	This allows you to configure monitoring for yourself based on threshold levels you determine, for example, over 5 show as Error.
   script	Use your own custom script to determine the monitoring status. See Scripts.

    

   State monitors

   column	Select the column that contains the state information. This will use a state field from the tile to determine the monitoring status and convert it into one of 3 levels: Healthy, Warning or Error.
   frequency	How often (in minutes) you want the data to be checked for changes.

    

   Threshold monitors

   Aggregation	top - uses the latest data point sum - adds the data points mean - the average of the data points count - a count of the number of data points
   Timeframe	The time period for which to aggregate data.
   Column	The data column that will determine the threshold.
   Frequency	How often (in minutes) you want the data to be checked for changes.
   Status: Error Warning	For example, for Pingdom you might set Error to greater than 700, and the status will show as red when the Average Response is greater than 700ms.

    

    

6. Explore the knowledge graph

   What is the Knowledge Graph?

   Knowledge graph uses a graph-structured data model to store descriptions of objects within your tools, so SquaredUp Cloud knows where to access your data. The knowledge graph shows all the objects (known as vertices) and their relationships to each other (edges) as a kind of map. Objects and relationships are imported when a plugin is added.

   The knowledge graph does not store time-series data like metrics, logs, and traces, or operational data like alerts, incidents, and releases. This data is instead streamed on-demand from the data source APIs when it’s needed.

   For example, when a dashboard shows a performance metric, or when a monitor evaluates health based on alerts from other tools, this data is queried directly from the tools and platforms you’ve integrated. Data available from those data sources are called ‘data streams’ which are defined by each plugin.

   Knowledge graph terminology

   Term	Description	Term used in JSON schema	Other terms
   Object	An entity that can be described, such as a server, group, person etc.	Vertex (singular) Vertices (plural)	node, entity, vertex object and item
   Relationship	This is the line between two objects that defines the relationship between them.	Edge	label, connection, edge object and link

   Where do I find the knowledge graph?

   There are different places where you can see the knowledge graph:

   • Clicking on the Graph tab in a workspace shows you the knowledge graph on a workspace-to-workspace level. You'll see all other workspaces your current workspace has a relationship to.

   • When you are looking at an object, you'll see the knowledge graph on an object-to-object level under Graph. It shows you all the other objects this object has a relationship to. The labels on the links tells you what kind of relationship it is. Those links can either be there automatically when they came from a plugin or they can be created by you via a custom correlation.

   • When you are searching for anything and hover over the result, you'll see the knowledge graph for it. Based on what you searched for (a workspace, a dashboard, an object) you'll see a knowledge graph based on that level.