Completely redesigned Kentik Sharing UX
Today, we just released a significant update to the way Kentik users will share the Kentik network observability experience, inside and outside of the company.
We have taken a set of horizontal features and have grouped them into consistent UX patterns for sharing Kentik content, whether these are reports, public snippets or even subscriptions. Read on!
What’s new?
With this update, we’ve centralized the Sharing functionality and streamlined the way it is presented on all screens of the UI/UX. As explained earlier, this creates a more holistic approach to sharing data from Kentik inside and outside.
This includes multiple areas of work, detailed in the sections below.
A redesigned, streamlined Share button on every screen
| Link: Internally or externally: this allows to share to users (regular URL copy) or non-users (Public Link Sharing) Note: Saved Views and Dashboards will soon be added to the shareable assets, their “Link” tab will at this point contain the usual Link Sharing UI. |
| Email: Share the current screen/workflow via email (works for both internal and external emails). This one generates a report ad-hoc and sends it to an email distribution list |
Subscription: |
Extending the subscription capabilities to many more screens
Historically, subscriptions were only available for dashboards, we wanted to do more to meet Kentik users “where they live”.
We extended subscriptions to a discrete set of screens/workflows, with the intent of furthering this list in the future. Subscriptions are available immediately for the following items (we followed our users and their feature requests to make a determination on which to work on first):
- Dashboards
We’ve added a few under the hood goodies such as the ability to treat carriage returns properly in subscription email messages, as well as offering another previously unavailable frequency: “Last Day of the Month” (useful to vet connectivity invoices at the end of the month) - Saved Views
Subscriptions were not available for Saved Views previously. They are now. - Connectivity Costs
We’re offering here a compelling subset of functionality, 4 types of subscriptions can be configured: Summary (corresponding to the summary screen), Provider(s), Site(s) and Connectivity Type(s).
Each one of the non summary subscriptions allows Admins to configure which set of Providers/Sites/Connectivity Types to configure these subscriptions for to bundle in one delivery. - Capacity Planning
As for Connectivity costs, users can now subscribe to a summary (aka front page) or a subset of Capacity Plans.
Extending the CSV export functionalities to many more screens/workflows
A significant number of non-technical users have requested (via FRs) to be able to download CSV data for some of the most used workflows, and be able to massage it further into their own reporting.
Additional CSV exports available
First and foremost, CSV report download is now available in these workflows/screens
- Saved views
Connectivity Costs
- All connectivity costs
- Per provider
- Per site
- Per connectivity type
Capacity Planning
- All plans details
- Any number of plans together in a single CSV
Kentik Market Intelligence
- Rankings CSV
- Customer and Provider CSV for any given network
To further streamline the experience, all reports download actions are now located in the exact same location, regardless to the screen the user is on, that is within the [Action] button as it initially was for Data Explorer.
CSV downloads now available for subscriptions
Not only have these CSV capabilities been extended, but they are now also available in subscriptions, which answers multiple Feature Requests we had had on Capacity Planning and Connectivity Costs.
Below is an example of a Connectivity Cost report being sent
- for Transit and Paid Private Peering
- As a CSV spreadsheet
- The Last day of the month
Multiple convenience UX changes to make this feature set work better
Settings + relocating Public Link Shares
While initially in the Navigation panel, Public Shares have now been moved together to the Settings screen, in their own “Share” panel to the right, bundled together as a cohesive functional unit:
Subscriptions & Sharing features in Library
- Library now gives a clear indication of when a given Saved View or Dashboard is involved in a subscription: the underlying goal is for admins to know before modifying a view that other users may be relying on it.
- Users can also now both subscribe and unsubscribe directly to a Saved View or Dashboard from the library by using the contextual actions:
Once Public Sharing is finalized for Saved Views and Dashboards (currently ongoing), a similar marker will be displayed.
Redesigned Report Subscriptions management screen
As displayed in the previous screenshots, the Report Subscriptions UI can now be accessed directly from the Sharing Modal, as displayed below:
The Report Subscriptions management screen has been significantly updated and now offers all the convenience features that our usual list screens offer, such as the search panel on the left.
Amongst the very useful items, Users can now quickly identify using filters:
- Subscriptions that they are recipients of
- Subscriptions that have non-kentik account emails in them (aka Shared Externally)
These two situations being potential data exfiltration threats, the UI allows Kentik Admins to identify them easily.
Subscription Auto-Sense at share time
As users ideally want to limit the amount of email subscriptions being created around the same screen/workflow/report, the sharing modal performs some amount of magic:
If a subscription already exist when the user hits the [Share] button and goes to the Subscription tab, the Subscription Title entry will offer to either
- Modify an existing subscription
OR - To create a new one
Sample share screen displaying the choice between "Create New subscription" vs "Edit Existing Subscription"
