We’ve received our second entry to the design a dashboard competition, another great example of an ‘at-a-glance’ overview, sent to us by Phillip Carter. Inspired by the Big Brother and Hobbit monitoring system, Phillip explains:
“Each of the coloured icons is hyperlinked to more detail. There should also be an updateable knowledge base of solutions for the highlighted problems. Something that can be tailored to the users environment.”
Thanks Phillip! We’re delighted you took the time to send us your design. It’s a very interesting approach…. stark, visual, and very simple to use. Rather than provide any data on the dashboard, this approach emphasizes status: what requires my attention as a DBA? Maybe at the dashboard level, you don’t want to see values or any metrics or graphs, just a basic indicator of where things may deviate from the norm, similar to a checklist.
So now let us know what you think? Do you want your dashboard to display metrics or just status? Would an ‘updateable knowledge base’, perhaps of issues specific to certain servers, be useful in your environment?
Please post your comments, or send us your own design (sketch, scribble, scrawl, or functional application) and we’ll post it for discussion.
One Comment
IMHO, the idea of displaying status vs metrics is ideal for DBAs responsible for more than 2 or 3 servers. In these cases, Phillip’s design prevents info overload. Conversely, a DBA in charge of 1 or 2 servers wants to see more detail (metrics) on the dashboard.
The idea for an ‘updateable knowledge base’ of issues specific to the server is also a great idea.
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