What is a perspective?

A perspective is one of several different views of a resource, showing a focused set of information. Each perspective is a page or template, which can be made to appear for many resources, dynamically showing the relevant information. For example, the 'Resource' perspective is one page that appears for all resources, showing the health, tags and properties relevant to that resource.

In the screenshot below the red box highlights the tabs for changing between perspectives for a virtual machine:

The first (default) perspective shown is the virtual machine perspective, and the user can click on resource to change to the resource perspective.

Perspectives are fully customisable, so you can show several different views of the same resource to fulfil the needs of different audiences, such as a specific team, and present the information in a more actionable way for them. For example, a SQL database will show a SQL Database perspective, as well as Resource, Alerts and Cost perspectives, and you can add a perspective for use by a particular team.

In contrast to standalone dashboards, perspectives are resource-level dashboards. That is, they are dashboards that are shown in the context of a specific resource. Perspectives can be created by a SquaredUp admin for a resource such as an application, resource group or VM, and also for an alert.

Because perspectives have a resource context (e.g. the application, resource group or VM) they have a number of advantages over standalone dashboards:

• the overall health (if available) of the resource is shown next to the title
• each tile can often be scoped to the resource itself or something relative to the resource, such as child resources
• the user can easily switch to other perspectives for the same resource

So the general advice is: if a dashboard is about a specific resource (by which we mean a subscription, resource group, or resource) then it's probably best to make it a perspective.

Perspective Settings

Target

The real power of perspectives is to create dynamic 'templates' that can be shown for any matching resource, but even if you are creating dashboards for a specific resource it is often better to create these as perspectives. For example, you can create one perspective for a particular VM, which then appears for ('targets') all VMs, and dynamically displays the information relevant to each machine.

A perspective can be targeted at:

• this resource, i.e. one resource only - the perspective will only be shown for this resource, for example one VM, or a particular resource group (or this resource group, or this subscription).
• all resources - the perspective will be shown when drilling down on any resource (or all resource groups, or all subscriptions).
• resources of type - the perspective will be shown for resources of the specified type. For example, by typing databases and selecting SQL databases the perspective will be shown for all SQL databases. (This option is not shown for resource groups or subscriptions).

Suppress

Usually all perspectives which match the current resource context are shown to the user. The Suppress option allows you to 'suppress' (hide by default) the perspective based on resource matching criteria. So whilst a perspective might be targeted at all resources of a certain type, you can also choose to hide it from a subset of resources (or resources groups or subscriptions, depending on what you are currently viewing).

This presents a simpler, tidier perspective ribbon to users, and if required, users can click the show more button on the perspective ribbon to view suppressed perspectives.

Perspective order

The perspective on the far left of the perspective ribbon is the default perspective, the one which is shown first.

To move a perspective to a new position on the ribbon:

1. Click on the perspective you wish to move.
2. Click on the edit button
   

3. Click on the perspective name on the ribbon and drag it to its new position.

   

Scoping tiles on perspectives

When a tile appears on a perspective it can be dynamically scoped to the resource that the perspective targets. So a tile's scope gives different options when the tile is on a perspective compared with a dashboard.

When a tile for resources appears on a dashboard, its scope will show list, resource group, subscription, tags and type.

On a perspective the scope shows different options, for example for a resource you will see this resource and other resources, and for a resource group you will see child resources and other resources. It is using this relational scoping that the perspective can be made to dynamically show data for a number of resources.

Editing the scope to work for many resources

Often the purpose of a perspective is for the one perspective you designed to be shown for many resources. For this to work, you may need to edit the tile's scope so that it is not specific to one resource, and will work for whichever resource is being shown.

Other resources

If there is no relationship between the desired scope and the current resource, then select other resources in the scope. This should be a last resort, as non-relative scopes will show the same items for every resource this perspective is scoped against.

Walkthrough: Viewing and changing perspective settings

1. In SquaredUp browse to a virtual machine by clicking on Resources > Computer > Virtual Machines and click on one of the VMs at the bottom of the page.
2. Let's take a look at the Virtual Machine perspective.
3. Click the edit button
   at the top right of the page.

4. Click the settings button
   that appears next to the edit button, to view the perspective settings.

   

5. The Title box allows you to change the perspective title. Remember, this perspective probably appears for several resources so the title should not be specific to this resource.
6. The Target section shows what the perspective is targeted at, in other words, which resources will show this perspective on their perspective ribbon. The Virtual Machine perspective shows the target is resources of type microsoft.compute/virtualmachines meaning that this perspective will show for all VMs. If you were to look at the resource perspective you would see it shows a target of all resources, meaning the resource perspective will show for all resources.

7. The Suppress section determines whether the perspective is hidden for any resources.

   

8. If the perspective is not currently suppressed for any resources, you can click Suppress this perspective (hide by default) to choose whether to hide this perspective for this or all resources (or resources groups or subscriptions, depending on what you are currently viewing).

9. If you have made a change to the perspective it will show as draft. To publish the changes click the unpublished changes button at the top of the screen, then click publish to make the changes live.

   

Creating a new perspective

For more information about creating new perspectives, including a walkthrough see How to create a perspective

I have duplicates of some perspectives on the perspective ribbon, what can I do?

This can happen if the same dashboard pack is imported more than once. The easiest way to resolve this is to delete the duplicate perspectives from SquaredUp. Make sure you have a backup of SquaredUp, because this can't be undone, then click on a duplicated perspective, click the edit button at the top right of the page, and then click the delete button.