Enhancement Ideas for Job Duration Dashboard - Community Brainstorming
Hello everyone,
I'm currently working on a Grafana dashboard to track the duration history of a specific job in a span of pipelines. I've put together an initial design based on my experience with Grafana and InfluxDB and some internal brainstorming iterations. Still, I'm sure there's room for improvement, and I'd love to get the community's thoughts on this before I start mining the necessary data, which may depend on your input.
- Current Features
- Call for Ideas
- Acknowledgement and Expectations
- Contributing Ideas
- Dashboards
- Closing Thoughts
Current Features
A brief description of techniques already employed in the sketch follows.
-
Template variables: we can use searchable variable parameters, like
trace
name in this dashboard - Color-Coded Execution Time Bars: using legends, e.g. chart with legends
- Interactive Elements for detailed pipeline analysis and external links to pipeline and Gantt chart dashboards. E.g. dashboards with clickable points
Call for Ideas
I'm reaching out to ask for your brainstorming power. How can we enhance this dashboard? Are there any features or data visualizations you've found particularly useful in your dashboards? Are there any advanced features you think could eventually be a game changer for this kind of tool?
Acknowledgement and Expectations
Your feedback is valuable, and I want to acknowledge that while I'm eager to incorporate more advanced features, introducing them might take some time due to the intricacies involved. The plan is to release and improve the dashboards in iterations, ensuring each version is stable and adds value.
Contributing Ideas
Please share your thoughts, sketches, code snippets, or other contributions in the comments below. Every bit of input is welcome, whether it's a minor tweak or a big idea.
Dashboards
Duration History of a Given Job
This Grafana dashboard visually represents the duration history for a specified job.
Overview
- Title: Duration History of a Given Job
- X-Axis: Represents individual pipelines ordered by time
-
Y-Axis: Time starting from the pipeline's
started_at
Filters and Controls
-
Job template variable
[Arrow #1]
: Allows selecting a specific job for analysis. -
Sharding template variable
[Arrow #2]
: Enables filtering by sharding criteria, with options like 'ALL', '1/X', '2/X', etc.
Visualization Components
-
Exec Time Color map
[Arrow #3]
, categorizing execution time by color. -
Execution Time Histogram:
- Highlighted by
[Arrow #4]
, bars represent the execution time of pipelines A1, A2, etc.
- Highlighted by
Features
-
Sharding Filter: A drop-down menu
[Arrow #5]
allowing the user to filter the data by sharding parameters, such as 'All', '1/x', '2/x', etc. -
Color-coded Bars: Displaying the execution time of the job for each pipeline. Bars are color-mapped
[Arrow #3]
to indicate the status of each job attempt:- Magenta
#F0F
for Timeout - Red
#F00
for Fail - Yellow
#FF0
for Hung - Green
#0F0
for Success
- Magenta
Alternatives
-
Maximum and Minimum Timestamps: We could use the aggregated version B
[Arrow B]
instead of A. The former has markers for the max(exec timestamp) and min(pending timestamp) to provide quick visual cues for the earliest and latest times relevant to the job executions.
Tradeoffs
- With A, we can quickly see how balanced the shards are.
- With A, we can create panel links per job
- With B, we can see the job duration for extended periods without clutter.
Interactions
-
Panel Links: By clicking on a pipeline bar
[Arrow #5]
, users can access related links, such as:- Pipeline Link: Directing to more detailed pipeline information.
- Gantt: Redirecting to a Gantt dashboard to visually represent the pipeline schedule.
Closing Thoughts
I'm looking forward to seeing your innovative ideas and suggestions.
Thank you all for your time and contributions!