Catchpoint provides several standard visualizations that you can use in your Dashboards. Which visualization you choose will depend on the type of data that you want to display, how you want to break the data down, and how the person viewing the data will be making use of it. This article describes each visualization type and provides some examples of when and how it might be useful.
Table
Tables are a very simple and common type of visualization, displaying data values in a grid format. You can use tables to display almost any type of data. Typically you would use them when you just want to make some raw data available in a format that is easy to sort and filter. We recommend using tables to display basic summary data - if you include too much detail in a table then it becomes difficult to read, and the person viewing it might have to scroll around to find the information they are looking for. Here is an example of a good use of a table, displaying the Test Time and Downtime percentage of each test.
Tile
The Tile visualization displays simple colored tiles organized in rows, where the color of each tile represents the status of a metric relative to a configured threshold. For example, you could configure a Tile visualization where each tile represents a city, and any city where a given test is performing very slowly will be colored red, and all others green. Tile visualizations are ideal when you want to be able to see at a glance which things are performing adequately and which are not. The person viewing the dashboard can click into any Tile to get more details. In this example, each tile represents a Web test and the color indicates how each test is doing against a Test Time (ms) threshold:
Time Series
A Time Series is a line graph with time on the X axis. This is useful when you want to see how something you are measuring has changed over time. For example, you might configure a Time Series to display your Tests' connect time, and then you'd be able to see quickly if the performance is trending in the right direction, or how it is affected by time of day. This Time Series plots the Average Document Complete time of several different webpages over the previous 24 hours:
Number Tile
The Number Tile visualization is one of the simplest visualizations available - it is simply a tile that displays a numeric value representing a single test metric. Use this for measurements that you need to check frequently and quickly.
Map
Map visualizations help you see how your tests are performing in different parts of the world. Similar to Tiles, you can quickly see where you have issues by using simple color codes - green for good, yellow for caution, and red for critical issues. You can aggregate the data by city or country, with each city or country that produced at least some test data color-coded according to test performance there. In this example, the map displays percentage of downtime for a test by city.
Scatterplot
A Scatterplot is similar to a time series in that time is represented on the X-axis, but instead of interpolating your data points into a line, each data point is represented as a small circle on the graph. You can hover over a data point to see more detail about the particular test run that generated it, and to access its corresponding Record. Use Scatterplots when you want to be able to dive deeper into the data and do a more thorough analysis.
Monitor
A monitor simply displays a list of recent alerts, events, or errors. When configured to display errors, it also includes a timeline. Monitors are useful for anyone who needs to respond quickly to technical issues.
Bar Chart
Bar Charts are used to do visual comparisons of metrics from different sources. For example, you might want to see how many connections you are getting from each country or region. In this example, Average Connect Time is displayed for each day of the week, broken down by City.
Matrix Chart
This visualization is specific to the Node-to-Node test type. It represents all of the selected nodes on both axes, with each cell in the matrix indicating the performance of the connection between the two corresponding nodes.
Gauge
The Gauge visualization is designed to display Experience Scores. You can aggregate experience score data in various ways, for example by Test, Product, Folder, or Geography. Each gauge in the widget represents the experience score for a single test or aggregation of tests.
