Panels
A panel is one chart, number or table on a dashboard. A good panel answers one question: “Is the line running?”, “How much did we produce today?”, “What is the temperature trend?”.
A panel consists of three parts:
- Data — which tags, and how to summarize them. Read more about data.
- Visual — how to show the result.
- Options — title, unit, decimals, colors and visual-specific settings.
Visuals
When picking a visual, every option shows a live preview with your own data:
Time series
The classic chart: values over time. Use it for trends: speed, temperature, energy use. Multiple tags can be drawn in one chart to compare them.
Stat
One big number, for example the current speed or the production of today. Perfect for at-a-glance dashboards on a TV screen. A stat can show the latest value or a summary over the time range.
Bar
Values per period as bars, for example production per hour or per day. Bars can be stacked to show a breakdown, for example production per article per day.
Pie
Shares of a total, for example downtime causes or energy use per machine. Use it when the shares matter more than the exact numbers.
Table
Rows and columns, for example the raw values of a tag or a list of production runs from the Operations datasource.
Alert list
Shows the alerts of your alert rules: which are active, which have been resolved. Put it on the main dashboard so problems are visible where everyone looks.
Options
Every visual has options to make it readable:
- Title — say what the panel answers, for example “Production today” instead of “counter_line1”.
- Unit and decimals — a number without a unit is a guess. Set °C, kWh, m/min, pieces.
- Colors and thresholds — for example a stat that turns red above a limit.
Panel transformations
Sometimes the queried data needs a final touch before it is shown. Panel transformations work on the query result, inside the panel:
| Transformation | What it does |
|---|---|
| Limit | Only keep the first n rows. |
| Sort by | Sort the result on a column. |
| Filter by value | Only keep rows matching a condition. |
| Remove columns | Hide columns you don’t want to show. |
| Join by field | Combine two query results on a shared column. |
| Merge | Merge multiple results into one table. |
| Merge columns | Combine columns into one. |
| Transpose | Swap rows and columns. |
Prefer solving things in the data pipeline over panel transformations. The pipeline is calculated by the database and is faster. Use panel transformations for presentation: sorting, limiting and hiding columns.