What's New in Dashboard Server SCOM Edition
What’s New in v5.4
Dashboard Server SCOM Edition v5.4 includes the following new features:
New visualization: Surface tile
New data source: ODBC
Updated Grid tile: major enhancements
New visualization: Surface tile
Overlay your most important
See How to use the Surface tile
New data source: ODBC
The new ODBC data source lets you instantly visualize any data from virtually any database. From Oracle, PostGre, MySQL to many more, you can now dashboard your most important metrics directly from your ODBC databases using a dynamic SQL query.
Updated Grid tile: major enhancements
Unlock your grid tiles! Breeze through your logs and alerts with the ability to sort, search and filter. Optimise the look of your dashboard tables for any screens by setting the zoom/font size, column width and improved text wrap. Available for any Grid tiles
For example see How to use the Alerts tile
Download now & more information
To get started see How to install Dashboard Server SCOM Edition.
Get the latest version of SCOM Edition
Read the Release Notes for Dashboard Server SCOM Edition for details on other improvements in this release.
Step by step guides on how to update Dashboard Server SCOM Edition:
For upgrades to minor versions:
For upgrades to major versions:
What’s New in v5.3
Dashboard Server SCOM Edition v5.3 includes the following new features:
Community Dashboards: Sharing and Importing
New visualization: Status Image
Default dashboard timeframe
Scalar: conditional colors
Donut: display improvements
Community Dashboards: Sharing and Importing
The Community Dashboards website has been completely redesigned to include any dashboard submitted by our community
Be a community hero! Export your own dashboards to our community using the new one-click export.
See Dashboard Packs
New visualization: Status Image
Visualize the status of what’s important to you, pinpoint a problem more quickly and accurately, and share your complex metrics into simple and compelling dashboards for your stakeholders. Thanks to the new Status Image visualization, you can overlay status icons from any external data sources on top of any images of your choice (e.g. a world map, a data center layout, a picture from your diagramming tool like Visio). Statuses can be retrieved and calculated from any data sources (Web API, PowerShell script, Splunk, Elasticsearch, etc) thanks to our intuitive tile designer.
See articles for tiles with the Status Icons Image visualization
Default dashboard timeframe
Set the default timeframe of your dashboard so that you and anyone you have shared the dashboard with Open Access can always see the dashboard in its most relevant light depending on its purpose and target audience. Set it to 30 days or longer for an application SLA dashboard shared with your stakeholders, or 1 hour for your root cause analysis dashboard. Timeframes range from 1 hour to 12 months.
Scalar: conditional colors
Add impact to your key metrics with conditional colors for scalar visualizations. Available for any
See articles for tiles with the Scalar visualization
Donut: display improvements
Include the ability to map a specific color to a specific segment/legend of the donut, show as percentage and sorting by value or legend. Note: Status tiles only support sorting, Alert and ServiceNow tiles only support percentage.
See articles for tiles with the Donut visualization
What’s New in v5.2
Dashboard Server SCOM Edition v5.2 includes the following new features:
PowerShell tile enhancements
New visualizations for Splunk
Public GitHub Samples repository
Various security improvements
PowerShell enhancements
The hugely popular PowerShell visualization tiles have been enhanced in this release to provide script execution controls and security configuration:
• Create your own Run As accounts for improved security.
• Configure script execution interval to independently control the load on your external data sources.
• All visualization scripts now run inside their own child process for increased robustness, with the ability to choose the execution environment (.NET Framework or .NET Core) for each script independently depending on the version of PowerShell your script is written.
See How to use the PowerShell tile
New Splunk visualizations
The Splunk tile now includes a full range of visualizations: Bar Graph, Donut, Line Graph, Scalar, Sparklines, Grid, Status Icons and Blocks.
See How to use the Splunk tile
GitHub Samples
A new public GitHub repository has been published, that contains sample dashboards and scripts, is now available and accessible from within the Dashboard Server application. The GitHub repository is opened to contributions from the community. Browse the repository for dashboard ideas and various scripts to help you make the most of Dashboard Server. From SolarWinds and Log Analytics dashboards to purpose-built SQL and PowerShell scripts, be sure to take a look at the growing list of samples and contribute your own creations!
Security Improvements
A number of security improvements have been made in this release, following our regular independent security review and penetration test. Best practices for secure deployment of Dashboard Server have been updated.
See Best Practices for Security
What’s New in v5.1
Dashboard Server SCOM Edition v5.1 includes the following new features:
- Two new data integrations: Splunk and Elasticsearch
- PowerShell tile: visualize any metrics
- Status visualizations for external data sources
- New visualizations for the SQL tile
New data integrations: Splunk and Elasticsearch
The new Splunk and Elasticsearch data integrations provide a consistent dashboarding experience to pro-actively visualize your log data. An intuitive point-and-click configuration wizard lets you import and visualize your saved queries from Splunk or Elasticsearch. Paste any query or write your own query in the Query DSL or SPL language. Queries support contextual variables so you can visualize your Splunk or Elasticsearch data dynamically on
See How to use the Elasticsearch tile and How to use the Splunk tile
New PowerShell tile to visualize any metrics
Available out of the box, with no separate configuration required, PowerShell visualizations let you connect to any data sources, display any metrics or build custom metrics on the fly. PowerShell scripting is incredibly powerful, and the possibilities in Dashboard Server are endless (e.g. correlate and aggregate results from multiple APIs, visualize local log files, and more!).
Leverage PowerShell modules to visualize performance metrics that are not easily available via an API (e.g. VMWare). Create your own profiles to store any PowerShell script that you want to execute across different tiles as the first part of your script, such as connection scripts to 3rd party tools, or to load a PowerShell module.
See How to use the PowerShell tile
New status visualizations for external data sources
Beautiful status visualizations provide an at-a-glance view of your most essential metrics to help turn complex metrics into easy to consume dashboards for stakeholders. The new status visualizations are available for most data sources (e.g. Web API, PowerShell, SQL, Log Analytics, Splunk, Elasticsearch). They are configurable both in terms of look and feel (e.g. blocks/list, dynamic labels, etc) and logic. Use the status logic to easily map a status field from your data source, combine multiple values from your data sources, and add custom calculations to generate your own statuses. Click to drill out to the corresponding object in your external tool.
New visualizations for the SQL tile
The SQL tile now includes the full suite of visualizations: Bar Graph, Donut, Line Graph, Scalar, Sparklines, Grid, Status Icons and Blocks.
What’s New in v5.0
Dashboard Server SCOM Edition v5.0 includes the following new features:
- Major overhaul of the dashboard designer experience
- New Open Access
- Improved Web API visualizations and configuration
- Refreshed visual experience
Major overhaul of the dashboard designer experience
Take real control of your layouts, creating rich dashboards easily. Use the new pre-built templates to quickly add a layout, which you can adjust as required. New controls to easily add rows and tiles anywhere on the dashboard. Add new columns to the right or left which will scale the width of the tiles evenly. Split a tile in two to create a nested layout. Other improvements include the ability to drag & drop tiles more easily and better vertical resizing.
See How to use the dashboard designer (v5)
New Open Access
Open Access shared dashboards now include simplified interactivity. You can now drill down to access more information with a named user license. Open Access dashboards work seamlessly on all devices, including mobile. Major improvements to the reliability of Open Access including self-healing capabilities and improved scaling and performance.
See Sharing Dashboards with anyone - Open Access
Improved Web API visualizations and configuration
Add more context to SCOM dashboards with our new Web API visualizations for your external data sources. New visualizations include the bar chart, donut, line graphs and sparklines. New configuration options include the ability to see the response data, mustache picker options and data mapping capabilities for the new visualizations.
See How to use the Web API tile
Refreshed visual experience
Better color contrasts in your visualizations, a new range of vibrant heatmap colors, a darker dark mode, and a more modern feel all round.
Internet Explorer is no longer supported.
What's New in v4What’s New in v4.8
Dashboard Server SCOM Edition v4.8 includes the following new features:
- New SQL Line Graph tile
- New Scalar tile to show the latest performance data figure
- New scalable metric labels for Performance metrics
- Line colors can be matched across Performance graphs
- Option to use colored Bar Top N graphs and match colors
New SQL Line Graph tile
A new SQL visualization allows you to display the results of a SQL query as a Line Graph.
A useful addition to the existing Scalar and Grid tiles, the new Line Graph tile is a great way to graph SQL data into one dashboarding experience from your SQL databases or the SCOM Data Warehouse.
Supports all SQL data types, connection strings, value columns selector and miscellaneous SQL capabilities (e.g. stored procedures, temporary tables).
New Scalar tile for performance data
This new performance visualization shows the most recent value for the selected metric. The font size and units can be changed and the figure can be rounded up or down using the mustache picker.
See How to use the Performance tile
New scalable metric labels for Performance metrics
When configuring a Performance tile, a new metric label option (see Performance Metric Labels) allows you to specify a metric label (percent, bytes, megabytes and seconds) or enter a custom metric label.
The metric label will show on the Y axis and when hovering on a Line graph or Report tile.
The metric label will show next to the metric value on Sparklines and Bar Top N tiles.
Match line colors across Performance graphs
The same line color is now used for each matching object across Performance graphs on a dashboard, when the object labels match.
Great with Open Access dashboards on wall-screens and for enterprise applications where you are focusing on a smaller number of similar objects across metrics.
Color matching is on by default, but can be toggled off per dashboard.
See How to enable graph color matching
Colored Bar Top N graphs
A toggle option on the Bar Top N graphs will now apply a different color for each bar.
The toggle is off by default but when turned on, the bar colors will match other Performance Graphs’ line colors if the label names are matching.
See How to enable graph color matching
What’s New in v4.7
Dashboard Server SCOM Edition v4.7 includes the following new features:
- New Infrastructure dashboards
- Alerts Analytics perspective
- Root Cause perspective
- Azure Log Analytics enhancements
- Search for more results
- Criteria Mustache picker
- Enhanced error handling
- Enterprise Applications sample pack
Infrastructure Dashboards
Along with a complete overhaul of the Infrastructure dashboards, new dashboards for Alert History and NOC Operators have been added to provide deeper insights into the environment.
- Alert History dashboard: detailed alert analysis of alerts over time, to help identify the noisiest management packs and objects
- NOC Operator dashboard: surfacing actionable insights for operators in one place
Alerts Analytics perspective
The new Alert Analytics perspective improves issue resolution times by providing alert analytics using Data Warehouse queries (SQL tile). Analytics include average time to resolution, frequency, and alerts of the same type open on other objects.
Root Cause perspective
The Root Cause perspective provides a correlated view of information to assist with troubleshooting. When a SCOM object is reported as “unhealthy” this new drill down enables the quick diagnoses of underlying issues.
Azure Log Analytics enhancements
Azure Log Analytics tile enhancements:
- A new bar graph visualization
- Quickly access and use your Saved KQL Queries from the Azure Portal
- Combine multiple values into the Line Graph visualization for a resource
See How to use the Azure Log Analytics tile
Other new features
- "Mustache" picker for Criteria scoping (see How to use criteria when scoping objects) now includes a Mustache picker to allow easy creation of specific expressions that refine the data from SCOM.
- "Show more" search results in the quick search pane.
- Enhanced error handling to no longer show hard to understand errors in published dashboards.
- Enterprise Application (EA) sample pack provides a sealed pack of sample EAs and dashboards to illustrate the most common SCOM Enterprise Application use cases (see Exploring the sample Enterprise Applications).
- Relevant Community packs will be offered at on installation and upgrade for the SCOM Management Packs installed.
What's New in v4.6
Dashboard Server SCOM Edition v4.6 includes the following new features:
- Open Access theme setting
- Dashboard pack upgrades
Open Access theme setting
It is now possible to choose which theme (light or dark) is used for Open Access dashboards. This setting is independent of users’ personal settings.
See Sharing Dashboards with anyone - Open Access for more details.
Dashboard Pack upgrades
Upgrading from the previous version will now automatically install updates to the Dashboard Server Dashboard Packs; new and updated dashboards will be installed, if your installed dashboards have been modified in any way which conflicts with the latest release then you will be able to retain your changes easily.
See Dashboard Packs and How to upgrade Dashboard Server SCOM Edition for more information.
What's New in v4.5
Dashboard Server SCOM Edition v4.5 brings
- Log Analytics visualizations
- Dark theme
- Pinning perspectives
- New Maintenance page for administrators
Log Analytics visualizations
You can now use line graphs and donuts in the Azure Log Analytics tile to provide enhanced visualizations of Azure Monitor Logs, as well as showing log data as either a scalar number or in grid tabular form.
See How to use the Azure Log Analytics tile
Dark Theme
SCOM joins the dark side in version 4.5 with the arrival of dark theme; users can choose which theme they prefer – light or dark - in their own Theme Personalization.
Pinning Perspectives
Publishing dashboards via Open Access is a great way to share via wall monitors or with users who just want high-level information; now in version 4.5 you can pin Perspectives to specific objects – such as a specific enterprise application - so the resulting Pinned Perspective can be shown on the navigation menu and be shared via Open Access; see Pinned Perspectives for more information.
New Maintenance page
The new administrator’s Maintenance Page displays important information, such as the latest product updates and high availability details, along with links for remote administration. Administrators can also control the logging level of Dashboard Server, thus controlling the log file size, and view and download the latest log files.
What's New in v4.4
Dashboard Server v4.4 brings three new features and many bug fixes and improvements.
- New dedicated ServiceNow tile
- VADA support for SQL 2017 & 2019
- Improved support in VADA for non-ASP.NET IIS websites and web apps
- New dashboard pack for version agnostic SQL management packs
The Service Now tile
The new ServiceNow tile introduces a new ServiceNow provider which is much simpler to configure than the generic Web API oauth provider (see How to use the ServiceNow tile).
The dedicated tile also makes it much quicker and easier to get ServiceNow incidents and change requests displayed in Dashboard Server, because the complex configuration is done for you.
In addition to the usual scalar and grid displays, this new tile brings you the popular donut visualization, allowing you to visualize the number of ServiceNow incidents or change requests and of course drill down to ServiceNow.
VADA support
VADA now supports SQL 2017 & 2019, meaning that component level discovery is now supported for SQL 2005 through to 2019.
We've also added improved support for non-ASP.NET IIS websites and web apps, which you'll see with some new icons that visualize these components during discovery and mapping.
For more information see Visual Application Discovery & Analysis (VADA).
Support for new SQL Server management pack
A new dashboard pack offers built-in perspectives for version agnostic SQL MPs. This means SQL instances show default perspectives when you drill down to them, but also data and graphs on VADA maps and in the Matrix tile.
New installations of Dashboard Server v4.4 will include this new dashboard pack by default.
For existing Dashboard Server installations you can download and import the dashboard pack from system > import dashboard packs within Dashboard Server.
For more information see Dashboard Packs.
What's New in v4.3
We are delighted to announce the availability of Dashboard Server v4.3, continuing our approach of bringing you frequent updates to the product. Version 4.2 was released just two months ago, and 4.1 two months before that. Each new release brings bug fixes, quality improvements and in this case some cool new features too.
For a demo of these new features take a look at the webinar 'Dashboard Server – v4.3 Release'.
Dashboard Server v4.3 brings some great new capabilities in two areas:
- New Performance Report tile. We have added a new type of Performance tile that enables you to make comparisons. You can either compare different metrics on the same chart, for example to identify correlations, or you can compare a metric with the same metric for a previous period, for example to identify trends or spot divergences from the norm.
- Extended discovery of Enterprise Applications (EAs) in VADA. When building an EA map with Visual Application Discovery and Analysis (VADA) you can now discover Oracle servers (Linux and Windows), and can discover components through two additional load balancer types - NetScaler and Kemp load balancers.
New Performance Report tile
We have introduced a new Performance Report tile (see How to use the Performance tile). This is similar to the current line graph tile, but introduces a new concept of 'layers'. A Performance Report tile can have multiple layers, but each layer is added to the same graph – allowing you to show different metrics or different scopes on the same chart – for example you could show memory utilization with CPU utilization, or compare connections per second on web servers with CPU utilization on your database servers. Each layer can also be used to compare metrics with the same metric in a previous period – e.g. last week or last month.
When you configure the tile you are sent to a new full window page to make it easier to add the multiple layers without being in a constrained space. Any changes you make in this page are synchronised back to the dashboard that hosts the tile, but will only be published when you publish that dashboard.
We expect to add more capabilities to this tile over time – for example a separate y axis, the ability to save and export, and potentially additional visualizations such as bar/column chart. We would love to hear from you what improvements you would most like to see next.
Improved VADA mapping
Our VADA technology is at the heart of the EA designer.
In response to requests from partners and customers we have extended its ability to discover application components (see Visual Application Discovery & Analysis (VADA)), specifically:
- Oracle - if you have installed the SCOM management packs for Oracle provided by NICE, then VADA will discover both Windows and Linux Oracle servers and add them to your application map.
- Kemp - similar to the capability we added in v4.0 for discovery of components through an F5 load balancer, if you have the SCOM Kemp community management pack installed, VADA will discover components downstream of a Kemp load balancer and let you add them to your application topology.
- NetScaler - likewise if you are using Citrix NetScaler load balancers, and have the Citrix management pack for SCOM installed, VADA will discover components to add to your network topology through the NetScaler load balancer. There are some restrictions here due to the more limited capabilities of that management pack.
Dashboard Server will check for the presence of these management packs, and will enable the associated discovery source to enable automatic VADA discovery. The settings page for EAM lists the possible discovery sources (see How to manage Dashboard Server MP dependencies) and provides details of where to acquire any missing management packs.
What's New in v4.2
Dashboard Server v4.2 introduces three new features, as well as a number of bug fixes and quality improvements. For a demo of these new features take a look at the webinar 'Dashboard Server – v4.2 Release' (55 mins).
The three new feature improvements in v4.2 are:
- Web API array support
- Scoping improvements
- Perspective hiding
For a demo of these new features take a look at the webinar 'Dashboard Server – v4.2 Release' (55 mins):
Web API array support
You can now build more powerful integrations with third party applications by building queries against multiple objects. You can write your own dynamic query strings based on a list of objects from the tile's scope, or add and edit the mustache style example code snippets. You can even use JavaScript to manipulate the SCOM property values being inserted.
See How to use the Web API tile.
Scoping improvement
You can now quickly and easily find a relevant scope for a new tile, rather than trawl through a long list of SCOM object classes and groups. Tile scopes on perspectives now include realtime contextual suggestions based on the current scope's relationships.
Perspective hiding
To make it easier for your users to find the relevant perspective for a dashboard, each perspective now has a suppress (hide by default) option. This presents a simpler, tidier perspective ribbon to users, and if required, users can click the show more button to view suppressed perspectives.
What's New in v4.1
Dashboard Server v4.1 brings improvements to VADA and license management, as well as a number of bug fixes and quality improvements.
- Performance improvements to VADA and the Enterprise Application (EA) Designer
- Simplified and improved license management (see How to reactivate your license)
To see more information on the improvements in version 4.1 see this blog post.
What's New in v4.0
Dashboard Server v4 is a major new release that brings significant updates to the dashboarding fundamentals, as well as introducing a brand new Enterprise Application model to SCOM. Upgrading to Dashboard Server v4 will firstly enable you to deliver a greater array of dashboards to an even wider audience, and secondly deliver a true enterprise application monitoring solution for your organization.
Dashboarding Fundamentals
New navigation experience
We've updated the navigation bar to offer a more intuitive navigation and authoring experience. See How to edit the Navigation Bar.
Matrix tile
The new Matrix tile supersedes the Dynamic Table tile to bring fully-customisable, data-rich grids to your dashboards. See How to use the Matrix tile.
Team Folders
Replacing user profiles, Team Folders enable you to deliver dashboards and delegate control to different teams within your organization (or to different clients if you are a service provider). See Team Folders.
New High Availability (HA) architecture
We have redesigned the HA architecture in Dashboard Server v4 to make it simple to configure and support higher volumes of usage. See Enabling High Availability.
Community Dashboards improvements
A new community.squaredup.com site supports improved product integration, including dashboard pack suggestions tailored to your SCOM environment.
Other dashboard improvements
You'll find many more improvements to our dashboards including:
- Advanced tile scoping on perspectives
- New monitor status block tile
- Faster loading and rendering
Enterprise Applications
Enterprise Application Designer
The new Enterprise Application (EA) Designer enables you to model your applications and save directly to SCOM as a new Enterprise Application class (see Enterprise Applications), replacing traditional SCOM distributed applications. Using the new designer, you can configure availability monitoring for your application, map your application using Visual Application Discovery and Analysis (VADA) and model the application's dependencies.
Application availability monitoring
Use the EA Designer to configure URL or TCP based outside-in availability monitoring of your applications, enabling you to surface meaningful application status dashboards and availability reporting to your business. See How to create an Enterprise Application.
Custom PowerShell based availability monitoring
In addition to URL and TCP monitoring, our powerful new custom PowerShell availability monitoring enables you to measure the availability of any application.
Manual availability reporting
Update your business dashboards with accurate availability information and meaningful status messages for your service desk and end users. See How to manually set the health state of an application.
Enterprise Application dashboards and SLA reporting
Out-of-the-box dashboards for Enterprise Applications enable you to rapidly deliver meaningful, end-to-end application monitoring to stakeholders across your organization, from end-users, through IT teams to business managers and application owners. Where "green" is based on availability tests and actually does mean it's available!
Next-generation VADA mapping
Our Visual Application Discovery and Analysis (VADA) technology is still at the heart of the EA Designer, and has some major new improvements:
- Component-level discovery: map applications across specific components such as websites, Windows services and SQL databases
- Windows service discovery: automatically generate the SCOM monitoring for Windows services identified as part of your applications
- F5 discovery (requires third party MP): discover application topologies across F5 load balancers
- Large dataset filtering: view and filter network connections in large-scale server applications
- Updated user experience: intuitive ‘filter-in’ approach to mapping allows you to filter out the noise and focus on the true application dependencies
Node connection monitoring
In addition to mapping out your application, the EA Designer will automatically set up TCP availability monitoring of each of the application components, giving your teams meaningful alerts for fast issue identification.