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OpenSearch Dashboards quickstart guide

This quickstart guide provides demonstrations to help you quickly explore OpenSearch Dashboards applications. You can use this guide either in your own environment or in the OpenSearch Playground to explore the following features:

Prerequisites

To follow this guide, you need access to one of the following OpenSearch installations:

Accessing OpenSearch Dashboards

Once the OpenSearch and OpenSearch Dashboards processes are running, view the OpenSearch Dashboards application by opening your browser and going to the dashboard URL:

The OpenSearch Dashboards default view is shown in the following image.

OpenSearch Dashboards interface default view

The demonstrations on this page use the Sample flight data dataset. If you’ve installed a local OpenSearch Dashboards instance, access OpenSearch Dashboards and add the sample data as described in Adding sample data.

Hiding the navigation panel

To enlarge the main page panel, you can undock and hide the navigation panel.

Undocking and hiding the navigation panel

To undock and hide the navigation panel, follow these steps:

  1. Select docked icon (dock) Undock navigation at the bottom of the navigation panel.

  2. Select the menu icon (menu) icon or cross icon (cross) to the right of the menu.

Unhiding and docking the navigation panel

To unhide and dock the navigation panel, follow these steps:

  1. Select the menu icon (menu) icon.

  2. Select undocked icon (undock) Dock navigation at the bottom of the navigation panel.

Adding sample data

If you’ve installed a local OpenSearch Dashboards instance, add one or more sample datasets, follow these steps:

  1. On the OpenSearch Dashboards home page, choose Add sample data. Or on any page, choose add-data icon (add data) Add data from the upper-right toolbar.

  2. On the Add sample data page, select the Add data button in the Sample flight data tile and any others that you want to add.

    The following image shows the available sample datasets.

    Adding sample data window

Using the Discover tool

With Discover, you can:

  • Choose data for analysis, set a time range for that data, search the data using Dashboards Query Language (DQL), and filter the results.
  • Analyze your data: query and filter data, view results in a table, and examine documents.
  • Create histograms to display the distribution of your data.

Follow these steps to use the Discover tool:

  1. From the navigation panel, choose OpenSearch Dashboards > Discover.

  2. On the Discover page, choose the index pattern opensearch_dashboards_sample_data_flights from the dropdown menu on the upper left.

  3. Select the calendar icon (calendar) icon to change the time filter from the default of Last 15 minutes to Last 7 days.

  4. In the DQL search bar, enter

     FlightDelay:true AND DestCountry: US AND FlightDelayMin >= 60

  5. Select Update.

    Results are shown for US-bound flights delayed by 60 minutes or more.

  6. Filter data by selecting plus icon (plus) Add filter from the DQL search bar and then selecting a Field, Operator, and Value from the dropdown lists in the Edit Filter popover. For example, select FlightDelayType, is, and Weather Delay.

  7. Select Save.

    The resulting view is shown in the following image.

    Discover output of steps 1 through 6

Using the Dashboards application

The Dashboards application creates and stores visualizations generated from your data.

With Dashboards, you can:

  • Display multiple data visualizations in a single view.
  • Build dynamic dashboards.
  • Create and share reports.
  • Embed analytics to differentiate your applications.

Follow these steps to use the application:

  1. From the navigation panel, select OpenSearch Dashboards > Dashboards. The panel displays a list of existing dashboards.

  2. In the search toolbar, search for and select [Flights] Global Flight Dashboard.

    The panel displays a dashboard preloaded with visualizations, including charts, maps, and data tables.

  3. To add other panels to the dashboard, select the Edit button and choose Add from the toolbar.

  4. In the search toolbar in the Add panels window, enter flights.

  5. From the narrowed list, select [Flights] Delay Buckets.

  6. Select cross icon (cross) to exit the confirmation dialog.

  7. Select cross icon (cross) to exit the Add panels window.

  8. Scroll down to confirm that the newly added panel is now displayed as the last panel on the dashboard.

    The resulting view is shown in the following image.

    Add panel view

For information about visualization types, see Building data visualizations. For information about using dashboards and visualizations in Observability, see Observability.

Filtering data in Dashboards

In Dashboards, you can interact with visualizations to filter data.

Using the [Flights] Global Flight Dashboard dashboard, follow these steps to further filter the sample flight data:

  1. On the [Flights] Airline Carrier panel, choose OpenSearch-Air.

    The dashboard updates automatically, adding the filter Carrier: OpenSearch-Air to the upper-left filter bar, as shown in the following image.

    Filter data demo

  2. Choose Save to save the dashboard.

Alternatively, you can use the dashboard toolbar to apply filters:

  1. Select cross icon (cross) in the Carrier: OpenSearch-Air filter in the filter bar to remove the filter.

  2. In the dashboard toolbar, choose plus icon (plus) Add filter.

  3. From the Field, Operator, and Value dropdown lists, choose Carrier, is, and OpenSearch-Air, respectively.

  4. Choose Save.

    The dashboard updates automatically.

    The resulting view is shown in the following image.

    Dashboards tutorial panel view

Next steps

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