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What's New in Dashboard Server Community Edition

Documentation Team
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What's New in Dashboard Server Community Edition

What’s New in v5.4

Dashboard Server Community Edition v5.4 includes the following new features:

  • New data source: ODBC

  • Updated Grid tile: major enhancements

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.

See How to use the SQL tile

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 Web API tile

Download now & more information

To get started see How to install Dashboard Server Community Edition using the installer or How to deploy Dashboard Server Community Edition from the Azure Marketplace

Get the latest version of Community Edition

Read the Release Notes for Dashboard Server Community Edition for details on other improvements in this release.

Step by step guides on how to update Dashboard Server Community Edition:

For upgrades to minor versions:

For upgrades to major versions:

  • Dashboard Server was released with v5. When the next major version is available the article link will be shown here.

 

What’s New in v5.3

Dashboard Server Community 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. Check out some of our most popular dashboards (VMWare, Kubernetes, and more) and import them directly in your own instance of Dashboard Server Community Edition.

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.

See Timeframes for tiles

Scalar: conditional colors

Add impact to your key metrics with conditional colors for scalar visualizations. Available for any metrics or data point from your external data sources. Use the intuitive logic builder to create custom conditions that will trigger your scalar visualization to change color. Choose from a range of colors with the option to highlight the background or the text. Also added support for web links so you can drill out to the corresponding tool to see more details about your metric.

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 Community 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!

See GitHub Samples repository

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 Community Edition v5.1 includes the following new features:

  • New visualizations available for the Elasticsearch, PowerShell, and SQL tiles
  • Dashboard Server Enterprise edition

New visualizations available for the Elasticsearch, PowerShell and SQL tiles

The Elasticsearch, PowerShell, and SQL tiles now include the full suite of visualizations: bar graph, donut, grid, line graph, scalar, sparklines and status.

See How to use the Elasticsearch tile, How to use the PowerShell tile and How to use the SQL tile

Dashboard Server Enterprise edition

Dashboard Server is free forever for up to 3 users. And we have just introduced the Enterprise edition for companies who need the flexibility to scale up their Dashboard Server usage. The Enterprise edition includes the following features:

  • Purchase 10 or more users: dashboards for all your teams anywhere in your organization
  • Team Folders: manage access to your dashboards and delegate control to specific groups of users inside and outside your organization so the right people see the right data. See Team Folders
  • High availability: enable load-balancing between servers or create two or more different access points into Dashboard Server with different modes of authentication. See Enabling High Availability
  • Enterprise integrations:
  • Dev/Test license
  • Onboarding & Technical Support: Setup assistance and training to get you up and running fast, and exceptional support that won’t let you down

See Licensing Overview, visit our website or contact our sales team for more information.

 

What’s New in v5.0

Dashboard Server is a dashboard tool that’s quick to implement, easy to set up, and effortless to maintain. Dashboard Server functions independently of SCOM and Azure and introduces a new PowerShell tile so you can dashboard virtually any data.

Watch these introductory videos and visit our website for more details.

Key features

Connect to any data source

Native Data Integrations

Elasticsearch (How to use the Elasticsearch tile) and Azure Log integrations tiles with intuitive point-and-click tile configuration (How to use the Azure Log Analytics tile).

Visualize your data

Comprehensive range of data visualizations for creating amazing dashboards; Bar Graph, Donut, Line Graph, Scalar, Sparklines, Grid, Status Icons and Blocks.

Unlimited Dashboards

Create unlimited dashboards and share them with everyone in your organization using Open Access (Sharing Dashboards with anyone - Open Access).