TimeSeriesChartingGuide

The following are the steps needed to create a successful Time Series Chart / Report depicting CPU, Memory, Filesystem, etc... .

  1. Open a new report
  2. Click on "Design" at bottom of screen
  3. Add your data source via the "Data" tab, "Add DataSource" button
  4. Build your query making sure to include
    1. Datetime value
    2. By Value (example would be machine name)
    3. Class value (example would be a column with CPU IDs or filesystem names)
    4. Value (the value you are about to chart)
    5. Make sure your ORDER BY values are in the following order
      1. By value
      2. Datetime
  5. Add a Group to the report
    1. On the right side of the screen, select the "Content" tab.
    2. Select the master-report
    3. "Add Group .." from the Toolbar and specifiy the following properties
      1. Name - the name of this group
      2. Group Fields - The "BY" column identified in your SQL statement1. An example that I use is "machine"
  6. Add a chart-element: drag it from the palette on the left-hand side of the screen into the new group-footer.
  7. Double click on the chart-element to open the chart-editor
  8. Select XY-LineChart as chart-type
  9. Make sure "TimeSeries-Collector" is selected in the selection-box on top of the right table. This defines the data for your chart.
  10. Update the following "required" properties
    1. Domain Period Type
    2. Series-by-field - "Class", the column of data that has the names for the series
    3. category-time-column - the column of data that has the datetime stamps
    4. value-column - the column of data that has the values you are ploting
  11. In the left-hand table, edit the properties for your chart. Update the following properties
    1. Title - The title placed at top of each report
    2. Show Legend (check / true) - if you have more than one class value in your data, this is usefull
  12. Preview the report (click on the "eye" icon in the lower toolbar).

Feel free to go back to the chart-editor and adjust the various properties.