Skylight Analytics 21.03 Release Notes

Executive Summary

Spring is in the air and another release of Skylight Performance Analytics is out the door. This one is jam packed full of exciting features that you've been asking for.

1. Time window exclusions - new ways to clean data reported on dashboards and used for alerts based on time of the day or whether impacted by a maintenance window
2. Capture time Private IP Resolution - record the assigned host information for seen IPs at the time of capture for historical accuracy (and improved usability in the UI)
3. Timeseries Widget Enhancements - ways to visualize non-continuous data (i.e. sparse data or data with gaps), dual Y axis for multiple unit types, arrangement options available outside of author mode and more!
4. Table Widget Enhancements - smarter way of filtering and column arrangement and sorting controls!

Impressed! We hope so, but keep scrolling to find out even more! There's a ton of new content in this one with the focus on enabling new use cases, but also improving your quality of experience.

Headline Features

Busy Hour

What times are critical to your success? Busy hours are the times that network performance is instrumental to your business and your customer satisfaction. We've added capabilities to help bring focus to these times by:

1. Letting you decide what times are considered “busy” and in what part of the network
2. Allowing users to only view dashboards based on data collected during busy hours
3. Optionally suppressing alert generation outside of busy hours

Maintenance Windows

Don’t let maintenance windows make you look bad! Network performance data collected during maintenance windows shouldn’t cause you grief with:

• Erroneous alerts
• Skewed grouped/higher levels stats
• Potential questions from customers watching over your shoulder or via their portal access

Skylight Analytics now supports:

1. Allow you to schedule your maintenance windows in advance
2. Allow users to only view dashboards based on data collected outside maintenance windows
3. Optionally suppress alert generation for data impacted by a maintenance windows

Capture Time Private IP Resolution

Capture sensors can now be configured to lookup any observed IPs locally against the internal DNS, and feed that information into Analytics along with the per packet intel data, allowing end users to see hostname information and not just IPs in the UI. IPs lacking host resolution details will be considered public and an attempt will be made to reverse look them up against Google (previous functionality).

Timeseries Widget Enhancements

Table Widget Enhancements

Additional features

Capture data aggregation step change

Change in the aggregation steps used for capture data to align with the upcoming aggregation steps for session based data.

Support for SAML for Delegated Authentication

Together with OpenID Connect, Skylight Analytics now supports the two major flavors of delegated integration!

VLAN Q-in-Q

Also referred to as VLAN stacking, this technique is very common in Software Defined Networking and Skylight Analytics now allows you to inspect both the inner and outer VLANs.

New PVQL Version

PVQL version 0.7 has been release. Check out the details here.

Quick Toggle Dark Mode

Changing Display Names

Dashboard widgets now support the customization of metrics names! Perfect for simplifying complex names for your customers, or managers ;)

Notable fixes and minor improvements

Features

• Feat(analytics): Add cell based filtering to v2 table with staged/gated filters
• Feat(analytics): Add sorting option to table
• Feat(analytics): Added ability to alias metrics
• Feat(analytics): Added ability to opt out of missing category result in session groupBy requests
• Feat(analytics): Added column re-ordering support
• Feat(analytics): Added metric rename to table and timeseries
• Feat(analytics): Added user controlled column widths and sorting
• Feat(analytics): Capture dns IP augmentation
• Feat(analytics): Card titles are now optional
• Feat(analytics): Inline chart config for arrangement, graph type, legend style
• Feat(analytics): Moved object counts from headers into agg widgets
• Feat(analytics): Removed extra dark theme and moved toggle to user menu
• Feat(analytics): Reorder sections in dashboards
• Feat(analytics): Rework of the authoring banner, block navigation when unsaved changes
• Feat(analytics): Split chart according to arrangement in v2 timeseries
• Feat(analytics): Sync zoom/granularity in timeseries cells, legend overflow/object count/single series
• Feat(analytics): Table server side sort, change option location
• Feat(analytics): Timeseries quick filter & visibility toggling
• Feat(analytics): Widgets use the color service with ranked categorical coloring
• Feat(data): Consolidate PVQL aggregate requests
• Feat(data): Consolidate PVQL timeseries requests
• Feat(data): Consolidate session aggregate requests by metadata
• Feat(data): Support sets in filters for analysis/dashboards
• Feat(intl): Add NEC datatype translations
• Feat(intl): Silverpeak translations
• Feat(intl): Throughput translations
• Feat(intl): Velocloud translations
• Feat(report): Attach task id to emails
• Feat(report): Properly display report scheduler status in report inventory and allow edting
• Feat(report): Report scheduler detail
• Feat(report): Send failure email to user when report generation failed
• Feat(report): Support display settings in reports
• Feat(report): Track report instances
• Feat(settings): Add data cleaning and settings toggles to alert provisioning
• Feat(settings): Busy hours provisioning and time exclusion support
• Feat(settings): Maintenance window provisioning
• Feat(ui): Display the release and solution version in the user menu

Fixes

• fix(analytics): Able to view set values for capture categorical data
• fix(analytics): Add left ellipsis on overflow for zones in tables/timeseries/crosstab
• fix(analytics): Add more width to aggregates to display quantiles (e.g. P95@1M)
• fix(analytics): Additional safety checks in Repeat Offenders
• fix(analytics): Adjust sizing of cleaning icons
• fix(analytics): Adjust spacing for horizontal legends in timeseries
• fix(analytics): Alert drill down requires policy selection
• fix(analytics): Augment IP csv exports with hostname info if available
• fix(analytics): Better handling of overflow in table header
• fix(analytics): Better spacing/overflow and conditional display for table columns/timeseries legends
• fix(analytics): Block filtering/allow drilldown for non-groupBy cells
• fix(analytics): Changing metric in crosstab resets bins
• fix(analytics): Colors set properly when configuring and color scheme is categorical
• fix(analytics): Crosstab renders cell font colors correctly when dark theme
• fix(analytics): Detect single series in timeseries widget for custom legend display
• fix(analytics): Display human readable category in timeseries widget
• fix(analytics): Display missing capture results correctly
• fix(analytics): Display source in table metric headers
• fix(analytics): Don't add 'missing' filter values to drilldown
• fix(analytics): Don't enable cell filters for cells that don't have filterable values
• fix(analytics): Don't include '---' in filters for drilldown
• fix(analytics): Drilldown option appears when timeseries has no filters
• fix(analytics): Filter object details metric selection to the object type
• fix(analytics): Filter out geo clusters missing a lat/lon centroid (breaks leaflet)
• fix(analytics): Fix css class for sparkline toggle button
• fix(analytics): Fix for missing sort-by when adding group-by in table
• fix(analytics): Fix ip address direction in timeseries legends
• fix(analytics): Fix selection for the active granularity
• fix(analytics): Fix stale dns lookup cell values, address categorical count comments
• fix(analytics): Fix topology export CSV
• fix(analytics): Fix truncate-text cell component, only show zone level selection for groupBys
• fix(analytics): Handle capture missing groupBy timeseries, block invalid drilldowns
• fix(analytics): Hide meta from meta-filter when missing permissions, aligned with data-dictionary
• fix(analytics): Higher max-width and overflow for categorical display values
• fix(analytics): Human readable labels for the row/column headers in crosstab
• fix(analytics): Increased column width for date columns to prevent cutting off of string
• fix(analytics): Invalidate unfilterable values in the free-form selector and filter from dataset options
• fix(analytics): Maintain filter behaviour when applying quick-filter, overwrite when applying from drilldown for v2 widgets
• fix(analytics): Missing response text in request error display
• fix(analytics): Normalize session timeseries responses to show sparse data
• fix(analytics): Only display direction if one is present
• fix(analytics): Only display source if one is present
• fix(analytics): Only link to external routes if the route exists
• fix(analytics): Overflow/ellipsis for display-key
• fix(analytics): Prevent manually entering invalid quantile values
• fix(analytics): Properly persist graph type
• fix(analytics): Quick plot action visible in analysis
• fix(analytics): React to change in granularity when appropriate
• fix(analytics): Recompute aggregate values/object count in timeseries legend when zoom/filters change
• fix(analytics): Reduce min resize width for table, don't show additional info in header when using alias
• fix(analytics): Reduce padding around column reordering modal
• fix(analytics): Remove double scroll in v2 table
• fix(analytics): Remove v2 widgets from object count computations based on v1 widgets
• fix(analytics): Save/cancel bounding box was covering the dashboard title when authoring
• fix(analytics): Selecting filter from BCA list adds filter properly
• fix(analytics): Sharing modal for a deleted user's dashboard opens again
• fix(analytics): Special handling of 'begin' when using crosstab filtering
• fix(analytics): Support array capture categorical field type
• fix(analytics): Support quick-filtering multiple values
• fix(analytics): Support set values in table CSV export
• fix(analytics): Toggling entry visibility clears selection
• fix(analytics): Tune the table/timeseries settings on hover to appear slower/disappear faster
• fix(analytics): Update color scheme correctly when switching between options
• fix(analytics): Update dashboard table on zoom interval changes
• fix(analytics): Use the moment service (with timezone) to display timeseries ticks
• fix(analytics): a hidden section now displays its title
• fix(analytics): added column sort indicator
• fix(analytics): alias icon is hidden for non contributors and pdf export
• fix(analytics): aliased metrics in editor now display their key as tooltip for admins/contributors
• fix(analytics): categorical entries can now be aliased
• fix(analytics): crosstab column width is now based on content size
• fix(analytics): crosstab now display reverse dns values
• fix(analytics): dashboards now fill empty collapsed header space
• fix(analytics): do not use hardcoded default timezone for initializing moment service
• fix(analytics): improve transient filter toggling
• fix(analytics): metrics in the v2 widget editor now display their global alias
• fix(analytics): moving card to section places it on the bottom
• fix(analytics): resized navigation bar and icon
• fix(analytics): resized right hand nav buttons
• fix(analytics): resolved background theme not applying to nav spacing
• fix(analytics): right side y axis now re-displays after its visibility is toggled
• fix(analytics): table header now displays "all" source
• fix(analytics): updated dashboard entry context menus to fit inside bounds
• fix(analytics): updated nav logo area size when collapsed
• fix(analytics): updated nav title typographies
• fix(analytics): updated network tab styles
• fix(analytics): updated styling of tab group follower
• fix(analytics): widget colors now update on theme change
• fix(data): 'regular' is not incompatible with 'directed'/'oriented' capture data
• fix(data): Add ltemon lossPct to percentage scale mappings
• fix(data): Add missing object types to SessionObjectType enum
• fix(data): Add null checks to captureCategoricalMapping
• fix(data): Add the sortBy metric to the basic dataset requests as an aggregate if not present
• fix(data): Add unit abbreviations for bits
• fix(data): Avoid sending timeseries requests/duplicate aggregates to session groupBy
• fix(data): Categorical count correctly displayed in table
• fix(data): Change strictGroupings to true by default ('missing' option for groupBy)
• fix(data): Clamp the refresh rate to 60s max
• fix(data): Clone values in data-entry-filter to avoid unintended references
• fix(data): Correct computation of data sources overlapping with the 'transport' layer when selecting layers
• fix(data): Correct handling of direction and objectType in relation to filters when processing session requests
• fix(data): Display aliases instead of ids for application sets in tables
• fix(data): Don't mix sources in capture groupBy (retain in alignment with sort), remove timeseries
• fix(data): Don't mix sources in session groupBy (retain in alignment with sort)
• fix(data): Don't wrap categorical values of unitType uuid in quotes
• fix(data): Ensure there is a layer for capture when converting v1 widget models to v2
• fix(data): Extra guard for filter favorites service
• fix(data): Filter out metrics missing from the dictionary in analysis
• fix(data): Filter session metadata permissions by data dictionary session entries
• fix(data): Fix composite metric request result parsing, fix composite groupBy serialization
• fix(data): Fix issue for missing "missing" entries, check if value is dataset when caching grouped
• fix(data): Fix the falsey check for session metadata in role permissions
• fix(data): Fix the lookup for session data dictionary entries when removing metadata
• fix(data): Guard against an empty object id in monitored objects response
• fix(data): Guard against undefined configureableDataEntry
• fix(data): Implemented NEC unit "mbps"
• fix(data): Improve widget dataset request queue consolidation
• fix(data): Mark fins.ratio, rsts ratio as pre-aggregated
• fix(data): Normalize active alert timeseries, and avoid negative values
• fix(data): Normalize the intl value path for smb commands/sub commands
• fix(data): Null guard when no sortBy has been set for a groupBy request
• fix(data): Only keep granularity in dataEntrySpec id if there is an aggregation, get request source
• fix(data): Only return an alias from the displayKey function if it differs from the original key
• fix(data): POST instead of GET for PVQL requests
• fix(data): Remove end period from google dns response answers
• fix(data): Remove non-applicable filters in when proceessing capture requests
• fix(data): Rename FlowMETER to Flowmeter
• fix(data): Shift null guard for groupBy to a later stage to avoid misaligned indices when building datasets
• fix(data): Support for volt/deg_c/dbm units and negative metric values
• fix(data): Support icmpmessage tuples, add option to normalize result values
• fix(data): Switch from PT10M to PT15M for the default granularity for P1D
• fix(data): Time based categorical values for sorting
• fix(data): Use the string value for smb commands/sub commands when filtering on those keys
• fix(details): Series dropdown content positions below trigger
• fix(intl): Correct cisco-telemetry-generic-counters to "Cisco Telem Generic"
• fix(reports): Add compression to logo and section image blocks
• fix(reports): Allow external emails to be added to receive report
• fix(reports): Allow report description as empty string in payload
• fix(reports): Filter report list by permission in dashboard
• fix(reports): Sort report instances by execution end time
• fix(reports): Use settings from dashboard as initial value
• fix(settings): Add missing translation for session alert policies with any direction
• fix(settings): Allow different object types in composite metrics, filter out badly serialized composite metrics
• fix(settings): Guard against 'undefined' name in roles
• fix(settings): Replace spaces with underscores in metadata aliases
• fix(ui): Disable auto-refresh by default
• fix(ui): Pin menu overflow