Observation Deck was initially built as a flexible landing page that adapts to users' interest. It includes a library of widgets that aren't available as Data/Metrics Explorer views, but also allows our users to embed views from these two key Infrastructure Analytics query applications. In its initial design, there was only one Observation Deck per user, and no ability for a group of users to share the same.

Discussions with our user base led to these requirements:

• the ability to build and then share Observation Decks across users;
• the ability to share an Observation Deck with users based on their assigned role, serving as a role-specific landing page for the tasks & checks that their roles demand
• the ability to centrally manage Observation Decks assignments as landing pages for different user groups

So... that's what this update is about! Read on! At the end of the article, we'll also share our vision of how Observation Decks and Dashboards will evolve in the short/mid/long term future, so make sure you review the last section.

Introducing the new observation decks

Observation Decks are now their own Library objects

If you go to the Library ([shift]+[s] from any screen in Kentik Portal, one of those magic shortcuts you want to know about) you will notice that the left-side filter panel now offers an additional choice for Type:

This means that you can now create multiple Observation Decks. Here's a few things about how it works:

• These Observation Decks are bound to the same RBAC rules as Dashboards: Shared vs Private settings supersede any RBAC permissions - a new RBAC section allows you to configure permissions for Observation Decks the same way that exists with Dashboards, including per-label permissions

• Important note: This doesn't replace or delete your existing Observation Deck; it has been simply been migrated to a Library object for you so you won't need to re-create it
  • The migrated Observation Decks are Private meaning you only will see them if you had one
  • You can change their share settings and they will then appear to other users in the Library (barring RBAC permissions) - ideally you should change their names before sharing them so you don't end up with multiple titled Observation Deck, each with a different owner

• If your Kentik Portal Landing page was an Observation Deck, the record has been updated in your settings, pointing to the same, migrated library object, which should result in no change to your experience upon login - see section in this article about Observation Deck assignments

A complete overhaul of Observation Deck editing capabilities

With this update, you'll find the previous ability to add widgets from a selection of existing ones with in the + Add Panel dropdown at the top:

We have now made editing Observation Deck simpler - let's go through a few useful changes that we've added:

Edit in place

All Observation Deck panel titles, as well as the main title are now editable in place: hovering on these titles highlights them, clicking loads an inline edit field.

New top level widget types

New widgets have been released that have long been asked by our users:

• Section widget
• Markdown text panel widget

The Section Widget lets you create sections to group panels in and make long Observation Decks easier for the users to consume - see below:

Conveniently, sections are also collapsible/expandable, as shown below:

Markdown Text panels are another addition making this Observation Deck update exciting, look for yourself in the screenshot below.

A couple tricks that we've found very useful when using markdown panels:

• use emojis to display clear do's and don'ts type of instructions
• use arrow characters in the titles to point at a nearby panel if you want to provide an inline explanation to them
• don't hesitate to abuse URL embedding, even if these don't point to wiki documentation: non-public URLs are OK as long as the consuming user has access to the resource the URL points to (private wikis are fine)
• a full library of markdown examples is available here, don't hesitate to steal ideas from it to make your Observation Decks more lively

Central management of Observation Decks as Landing Page experiences

To further Observation Deck's usefulness and make them more manageable at scale in the case of user groups with different demands in Kentik Portal, we've extended management capabilities throughout the Settings experience.

Per user assignment of Observation Deck as a Landing Page

If your user permissions allows it, you can now assign Landing Pages to users yourself (it used to be a user private setting).

In the Company Settings > Users > Edit User workflow, you'll now be able to set a specific Observation Deck as a landing page for any user:

Beyond that, you'll also be able to leverage Bulk Edit capabilities from the same Users management page to assign the same Observation Deck to multiple users at the same time in one fell swoop!

SSO Role-Sets and the associated Landing Page

Some of our users use SSO RBAC Automated Attribute Mapping via Role Sets (see the announcement here): this feature allows Kentik Administrator to set RBAC permissions and enforce them at login based on users' SAML2 attributes, including User Groups.

In that context, a Role-Set is a collection of roles assigned by SSO at login, and it now contains a setting to assign a specific landing page: each who has been assigned a Role-Set containing a Landing Page setting will now default to the selected Landing Page, where a named Observation Deck can be configured, as shown below.

User API extensions for Observation Decks as a Landing Page

Some users prefer relying on programmatic capabilities to set up users using our API - for those we've also extended the User API endpoints to include setting an Observation Deck as a landing page programmatically

What is the future of Dashboards and Observation Decks ?

As a lot of you have already pointed out, Observation Decks and Dashboards are very similar. For example, a lot of our users have asked for an ability to add Observation Deck widgets to Dashboards.

Additionally, we have determined that Dashboards have a high barrier to entry for our newer users, and are too involved to Create or Edit.

For both these reasons, we will merge Observation Decks and Dashboards together in the near future. Here's a (non-exhaustive) list of what you can expect:

• All existing Observation Decks will be migrated to dashboards
• The new Dashboards experience will inherit the newer, simplified Edit/Create User Experience of Observation Deck (ex: Edit Mode is permanent, no need to toggle View/Edit mode to make layout changes etc...)
• Existing Observation Deck widgets will by default be available in the new Dashboards experience
• The new Dashboards experience will include all the data-sets that you can add to Kentik: Traffic(Flow), NMS(Metrics), Synthetics, Events...
• The new Dashboards experience will see its Guided Mode powers significantly overhauled and improved to make interactive dashboards a point of focus for creators

Last but not least, we have a long term project to sprinkle AI magic over these new dashboards getting dashboard creation a step closer to true Generative AI!

Tell us what you'd like to see in these future dashboards, it's never to late to get involved in the future of Kentik Portal and we love sourcing our future improvements from our users themselves!