How to use the Status tile

About the Status tile

The Status tile allows you to show resources, resource groups and subscriptions (see What is an Azure Resource?), and any health states.

Tip: Too add more context to the health states your displaying, you can also show them on an image background. For example, you can use a map as a background and show your servers and their health on the map based on their location.
You have two options for that: You can either use the Surface tile which even lets you display additional information to the health state (How to use the Surface tile) or, if you just need the health state, you can use the Image tile (see How to use the Image tile).

How to configure a Status tile

1. Add a new tile to a dashboard or perspective and choose the Status tile.

   

2. Choose the visualization for your tile:

   Note: Donuts are only available for resources, not for resource groups and subscriptions.

   Status Icons

   Shows the state of items as icons with different colors. You can display just the icons or together with a description. You can also use a background image and drag the icons into position on the image.

   Example:

   

   

   Status Blocks

   Shows the state of items as blocks with different colors.

   Example:

   

   Donut

   Shows the results in a donut shape.

   Example:

   

3. Scope:

   The scope section allows you to define what is shown.

   Note:

   When you select a resource group in the resource group section, the status for resources within that resource group will be shown.

   Scope options on dashboards

   Tip: If you experience any problems with scoping tiles, you'll find FAQs and help in the article How to scope tiles.

   Note: By default, results are shown across all subscriptions (unless the subscription option is chosen to specify only one or more subscriptions).

   Filter by tenant	By default results are shown across all tenants. In Dashboard Server 4.7 and above a user who has access to multiple tenants will see a filter by tenant option. If you see the message "You do not have access to all of the tenants currently selected" or "Tenant ID could not be resolved" In a multi-tenant environment a user who does not have access to all tenants will see this message if they attempt to edit a scope containing tenants that they do not have access to. This may be because: One Dashboard Server admin has added a tile scoped to tenants that other Dashboard Server admins do not have permissions to. The customer/tenant is no longer serviced by this Customer Service Provider (CSP), so the tenant has been permanently removed for all Dashboard Server admins. Symptoms A tile scope shows: "You do not have access to all of the tenants currently selected. Click here to reset which will remove those tenants from the scope." Tenants the user does not have access to show as: "Tenant ID could not be resolved" Procedure The message warns users that they do not have permissions to all the tenants in the scope. If the user chooses to reset and therefore edit the scope then the tenants that they do not have access to will be removed. If saved this scope will also have those tenants removed for users who do have access to them. It is not possible for the user to edit the scope without those tenants being removed from the scope. Where a tenant has been removed permanently you may wish to reset the scope to remove the unresolvable tenants.
   List	List allows you to select several individual items to show. You can add multiple items. To remove an item click the x to the right of its name. Tip: Start typing and after two characters you'll see suggestions that match the name appear. Note: It depends on the tile what happens when you select more than one item. For example, when you select two virtual machines for a Status tile, you'll see the status of those VMs individually. When you select two virtual machines for a Cost Management tile, you'll see the cost for the two VMs added together.
   Resource group	Select one or more resource groups. Filter by type: Tick filter by type to only show resources of a particular type within the chosen resource group.
   Subscription	Select one or more subscriptions from the dropdown box if you wish to restrict results to only one or more subscriptions. When this is not used results are shown across all subscriptions. Filter by type: Tick filter by type to only show resources of a particular type within the chosen subscription.
   Tags	Select items with a particular tag. Add the tag name and the tag value you want to use to search for. If you select multiple tags, the search automatically 'ANDs' the tags which means the scope only contains items which are tagged with all the tags listed. Filter by type: Tick filter by type to only show resources of a particular type within the chosen tag(s).
   Type	Scope type can be used to show all resources of a particular type, for example all databases across all subscriptions, by typing databases and selecting SQL databases.
   Show hidden types	This works in the same way as the Show hidden types option in the Azure portal. Hidden types include some ancillary resources which are created/managed by Azure infrastructure. It might be useful to display these resources when cleaning up your resource groups or subscriptions.

   Scope options on perspectives

   Note: If you never used a perspective, you should read Working with perspectives before scoping tiles on perspectives.

   The power of perspectives is that tiles on a perspective can use a dynamic scope. A dynamic scope considers the currently viewed resource. A dynamic scope consists of two different states:

   • the configuration of the scope in the tile (for example, "consider child objects of type logical disk for the currently viewed object")

   • the actual resolved scope that depends on which resource you are currently viewing ("this object has 5 child objects of type logical disk")

   After configuring the dynamic scope once in the tile, you'll get different results depending how the scope is resolved on the different resources you are viewing.

   On perspectives, you can scope tiles to:

   this resource (only on perspectives for resources)	The tile's scope will be the resolved to the resource that is currently viewed.
   child resources (only on perspectives for resource groups and subscriptions)	When you select this option, the scope of the tile will be resolved to all resources that are in the group or subscription that is currently viewed. If you want to narrow the scope down to a specific type of resource in the group or subscription, you can filter for one specific type of resource.
   other resources	Gives you the normal, non-dynamic scope options you are used to when scoping tiles on dashboards. This means the tile will not dynamically adapt it's content to the currently viewed resource, it will always show data for the static resource picked here. Since the power of perspectives is that their tiles can show data for different resources depending on what resource is currently being viewed, you should only select this option when you are sure that there is no relationship between the desired scope and the currently viewed resource.

4. Configure the settings for the visualization you chose:

   Settings for Icons

   Sort

   Sort allows you to change the order of the results displayed. You can also group them by their characteristics.

   default	By default, the sorting of the blocks or icons depends on the data source. This can be alphabetical sorting or the order in which data comes back from an API request.
   sort by	Sort by label or tenant, ascending or descending
   group by	Group by label or tenant, ascending or descending

   Label

   Allows you to change the label of the results.

   name	Choose this option if you want to use the default label that has been created automatically.
   custom	Here you can change the label to a custom label. You can use static text and dynamic properties. Use the mustache picker to select dynamic properties from the response data to use them as labels. For more information see How to use Custom Labels

   Sublabel

   Allows you to add a sublabel of the results.

   resource summary (only for resources)	Displays a summary of the resource. Resource groups and subscriptions don't have this option but display a default custom label instead (see below).
   custom	Note: For resource groups, the default custom label is the subscription. For subscriptions, the default custom label is the subscription ID. Here you can change the label to a custom label. You can use static text and dynamic properties. Use the mustache picker to select dynamic properties from the response data to use them as labels. For more information see How to use Custom Labels
   none	No sublabel.

   Display styles for Status icons

   This setting is not done in a panel, you can change the display style even after you finished configuring the tile.

   You can use toggle zoom button at the top right of the tile to change between the different ways Status icons can be displayed.

   

   One long list
   Column list
   Icons only

   Settings for Blocks

   Label

   Allows you to change the label of the results.

   name	Choose this option if you want to use the default label that has been created automatically.
   custom	Here you can change the label to a custom label. You can use static text and dynamic properties. Use the mustache picker to select dynamic properties from the response data to use them as labels. For more information see How to use Custom Labels

   Sublabel

   Allows you to add a sublabel of the results.

   resource summary (only for resources)	Displays a summary of the resource. Resource groups and subscriptions don't have this option but display a default custom label instead (see below).
   custom	Note: For resource groups, the default custom label is the subscription. For subscriptions, the default custom label is the subscription ID. Here you can change the label to a custom label. You can use static text and dynamic properties. Use the mustache picker to select dynamic properties from the response data to use them as labels. For more information see How to use Custom Labels
   none	No sublabel.

   Sort

   Sort allows you to change the order of the results displayed. You can also group them by their characteristics.

   default	By default, the sorting of the blocks or icons depends on the data source. This can be alphabetical sorting or the order in which data comes back from an API request.
   sort by	Sort by label or tenant, ascending or descending
   group by	Group by label or tenant, ascending or descending

   Blocks

   Here you can set the number of columns for the blocks, their height and the font size within the blocks.

   Settings for Donuts

   Sort

   Sort allows you to change the order of the results displayed. You can sort by value (ascending or descending) value or health state (ascending from healthy to critical or descending from critical to healthy)

   Display

   Size mode:

   Default	Displays the donut scaled to the height of the tile.
   Fill	Enlarges the donut to use the whole width of the tile. If you chose the fill option and show the legend, you can define the size of the legend with a slider.

   
   

   Show legend:

   Allows you to show or hide the legend of the graph.

    

   Display mode:

   Allows you to switch between displaying absolute values or percentages.

5. Click done to save the tile.

   The tile now shows data according to your settings.

Walkthroughs

Creating a high impact dashboard with status blocks to show all resources of the same type across resource groups

The Status tile can be used on a dashboard or a perspective. This walkthrough shows you how to add a Status Resources Blocks tile to a dashboard.

1. In Dashboard Server navigate to where you'd like the dashboard to be created. Hover over the + button and click dashboard.

2. Give the dashboard a title, by replacing the text that says New Dashboard.

   The dashboard is saved as you go along so there's no need to save your changes. You can find your dashboard by clicking on the right-hand menu ☰ > system > unpublished.

3. A new tile has already been added to the dashboard. Edit the title by overwriting the placeholder value New tile with your own title.

4. The tile selector will already be open. Click Status.

5. Click on the Resources (Blocks) button to create a Status Resources Blocks tile.

6. Next we need to scope the tile.

   In the scope section select type then start to type the name of a type, such as virtual machines, and then click on correct type from the results.

   Block tiles for the resources of this type should appear after a moment. You could stop here, but we'll continue to configure the tile.

7. In the sort section click group by, then health state. This will group your resources by health state.

   

8. The blocks section allows you to change the size and layout of the blocks, by changing the number of columns, the block height and the font size. This can be useful when creating a dashboard for a wall monitor.

9. Leave the label section as it is for now.

10. In the sublabel section click on custom then click on the mustache {{}} helper button on the right. Select location from the custom label dropdown list.

11. Click done.

    

Showing all virtual machines within a resource group as status icons

This walkthrough shows you how to add a Status Resources Icon tile to a dashboard.

1. In Dashboard Server navigate to where you'd like the dashboard to be created. Hover over the + button and click dashboard.

2. Give the dashboard a title, by replacing the text that says New Dashboard.

   The dashboard is saved as you go along so there's no need to save your changes. You can find your dashboard by clicking on the right-hand menu ☰ > system > unpublished.

3. A new tile has already been added to the dashboard. Edit the title by overwriting the placeholder value New tile with your own title.
4. The tile selector will already be open. Click Status.

5. Click on the Resources (Icons) button to create a Status Resources Icons tile.

6. Next we need to scope the tile. In the scope section select resource group then start to type the name of a resource group, and then click on correct group from the results.

   Icons for the resources in this resource group should appear. You could stop here, but we'll continue to configure the tile.

7. In the sort section click group by, then type. This will group your resources by type.

   

8. Make a note of one of the types returned in the results.

9. Click on the scope section again, tick filter by type and start typing the name of one of the resources types, for example virtual machines, then select it from the list. This scope the tile to only show resources of that type.

   

10. Once you've filtered the scope to only show resources of a particular type you'll probably want to change the sort to group by something other than type. Click on the sort section and click on location. The tile will now show all the virtual machines in the selected resource group by location.

    The label and sublabel sections allow you to edit the labels displayed if you wish to.

11. In the label section we're going to use the custom option, to create a custom label which is particularly useful to get the label to fit within the block when using a large font size. Click on custom, then click on the mustache {{}} helper button on the right to show the custom label dropdown list.

12. The dropdown list shows all the options available along with an example value. In this walkthrough we are going to select properties.hardwareProfile.vmSize. This will then appear next to the original label in the label template box, and you can edit it as required, for example to add spaces and bracket as below:

    

13. In the sublabel section click on custom then click on the mustache {{}} helper button on the right to show the custom label dropdown list. For example, you might like to select properties.storageProfile.osDisk.diskSizeGB to show the disk size and then type GB disk afterwards as below:

    {{properties.storageProfile.osDisk.diskSizeGB}}GB disk

14. Click done.

    

Hints and Tips

How to change how Status icons are displayed

You can use toggle zoom button at the top right of the tile to change between the different ways Status icons can be displayed.

One long list
Column list
Icons only