Skylight Analytics 21.06 Release Notes

Executive Summary

1. Performance - With a focus on improving our ingestion capabilities and query response time for our large customers, we're now rolling up data into higher level time steps as it comes in!
2. Openness - Many of our customers love Analytics and really want to pull in their non-Accedian PM, so we're making it easier by adding an OpenMetrics interface!
3. Improved Analysis - A more streamlined UX to drill down from a dashboard to the next level down with some new tools.

You're going to want to keep scolling to see the changes!

Headline Features

Pre-aggregation of Session Data

To enable extended retention of higher granularity data and faster query performance for session data, we'll now be rolling up incoming data into 1min, 15min and 60min buckets with min/max/avg aggregations. There's nothing for you as an end user to change in your interaction with Analytics - just sit back and enjoy more expedient results.

OpenMetrics SDK

• Accedian’s own PM data can be made even better by pulling in 3rd party data to give operations teams more insight with what infrastructure or application elements are self-reporting
• Leverage our powerful toolset for observability and investigation as a single pane of glass for Performance Monitoring
• This SDK approach to onboarding will be rolled out as phases - currently we are rolling this out to Enable Accedian Professional Services, and will open it up to customers and partners shortly!
• This new way to onboard 3rd party data embrasses the rich open source community around Prometheus, enabling the use of off the shelf "exporters" for your device that can feed into Skylight Roadrunner (often without code, just config)

The Improved Analysis

We went to great lengths to improve the usability, efficiency and approachability of our deep dive tool set. Take a gander, try it out and let us know how you like it!

TopN Drill Down Workflow from Dashboards

• Go straight from a TopN into analysis without leaving the dashboard
• Analysis can be minimized and the new filter optional sent back to the dashboard

Working with Aggregates!

• New analysis will download aggregate metrics and metadata for a subset of the data matching the filter (top 1000)
• The aggregate metrics will be based on the time frame under investigation
• This is all cached in the browser for a very fast UX
• Metrics and metadata to be collected is part of the “view”

Enhanced Distribution

• Easy to add, remove or change order of categories of metadata
• Ability to add inclusion or exclusion filters
• Option to see metadata relationships (parallel axis)
• Ability to quickly plot a reference time series based on metadata

Topology

• Explore the topology of the data set under analysis to visualize potential causation for poor path performance
• Rank by Diff will help find the largest observed element to element increase
• Metric gradient helps isolate “hot” elements

Geo Map

• Use session endpoint geo coordinates to visualize grouping based on your data set under investigation
• Even in compact form, geo can be used as a method of filtering the data set!
• Swap between 3D and clustered views

Trend Lines

• Trend line clusters are provided to filter the data set
• User can manually expand the scope for trend line analysis (default to top 100)

Additional features

Yeah, that's not all! We went even further this release!

Dataset Export Report (limited availability)

• Scheduled generation of a csv report
• Hourly or daily aggregated timeseries data of your chosen metrics per object (including metadata columns!)
• Ability to define a simple Boolean threshold violation indicator per metric
• Download link is emailed to recipients (need to be an authorized user in analytics to access)

Reworked Object Details

• Geo map of start/end points in header for reference
• Overview page with general info (defaults to a particular view with set of metrics)
• Topology page to replace Logical Event Map, and actually driven by topology array instead of metadata
• Performance page to add/view specific metrics on line charts
• Alerts page to have a better summary of alerts history for a given object

Aggregate Dashboard Widget

• Rework of histogram widget config to be less confusing and offer a guided experience to help with BIN provisioning
• Ability to reference Threshold Profiles for pre-aggregate bin definition
• Ability to use metric baseline!
• Lack of bins results in just an aggregate number (we folded the number widget into here)

Metric Baseline

• Analytics keeps a running average for every "enabled" metric based on the hour of the week
• Now we can configure how many weeks of historical data are used to determine "hour of the week" baseline (default 6 weeks)
• Baselines can now be used in the aggregate widget as a threshold!

The NEW Accedian Documentation Site

You're on it now! A single location to search for help articles across the product line.

Notable Feature Deprecations

The following features will no longer be available once your system is upgraded to Analytics 21.06.

Notable fixes and minor improvements

• To be provided at GA