## Long term vision A user can choose a data source (within GitLab or out), a dashboard layout and visualizations for display. ## JTBD statement(s) * When there's new data, I want to organize it myself, so I can present what's important to my stakeholders. ## Use Cases to support / User Stories * As a PM/EM who is curious about the usage of software my team is shipping, I want to customize a view of saved visualizations, so I can get all/only the data I care about in a single dashboard. - [Iteration 1](https://gitlab.com/groups/gitlab-org/-/epics/10939) - create a custom dashboard using saved visualizations - [Solution Validation issue](https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/ux-research/-/issues/2492) - Iteration 2 - TBD - The next step is to ship the [first iteration](### MVC) of the [Product Analytics visualization Designer](https://gitlab.com/groups/gitlab-org/-/epics/9386) and then we may work that flow into the dashboard creation / a user can add a custom saved visualization into their dashboard. ### [MVC](https://gitlab.com/groups/gitlab-org/-/epics/10939) 1. Data from current project 1. List of built in visualizations possible 1. Set layout of dashboard A walk through of the vision and MVC using the Story Map and Design is available [here](https://gitlab.zoom.us/rec/share/YOC8YndXhC0__ZnfVlUmaOIF246m3YRRtWt9Vjm11NABWpQM612e7Guu-IEsC19w.UZ5APZ5O81hE7Kv_) As part of demoing our Vision POC, as well as identifying work to be done as part of [building our first sets of dashboards and visualizations](https://gitlab.com/groups/gitlab-org/-/epics/8466 "Product analytics first sets of dashboards and visualizations"), we've discussed the need to have customizable, schema-driven dashboards to help organize and manage dashboards throughout our features. This epic represents the work necessary to support this functionality. Work is already being done to [identify and refactor any repeated part of our dashboard views](https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab/-/issues/370557 "Create any necessary reusable UI components and services for production-ready dashboards"). It would make sense a next step to then be able to define dimensions and metrics required for a dashboard, map them to options on how to visualize them, in addition to remembering any customizations made by users (reordering, resizing, tweaking any configurable options). ### Future iterations Things we want to support later within either the Dashboard Creation flow or the editor. * ~~Support for Value Stream Analytics/Value Stream Dashboard Components~~ Now done. * Creation of a visualization in the creator flow - After [Visualization Designer](https://gitlab.com/groups/gitlab-org/-/epics/11555) implementation * Support for other components (Observability, Secure) * Support for other data sources (pending validation) - Multiple GitLab projects - Data Upload (xcel, csv, json, ??) - External data Stores (a database, "other" clickhouse, prometheus, etc.) ## Proposal 1. Provide a set of pre-defined dashboards and allow users to create their own using this schema. 1. Pre-defined dashboards should live in a central directory or location for the GitLab installation that all project can reference. These should be read-only from the projects perspective. 2. User-defined dashboards should live in the `.gitlab/` folder (or subfolder) of the project. 1. Living in the project implies that they are read-write by project members. [CODEOWNERS](https://docs.gitlab.com/ee/user/project/code_owners.html) can be used to lock down access to these files if desired. 2. Allow users to customize the dashboards (within the scope defined below) 1. Users should have a GUI-based approach for rearranging and resizing widgets 1. Notably, GUI-based customization of the query that a widget uses is out of scope for this iteration 2. Users should be able to use the underlying schema to customize a dashboard with respect to rearranging and resizing widgets, as well as adding/remove widgets and modifying the queries that they use. 1. The first phase will be to add a hand crafted visualization. 2. Further work on creating/editing visualizations will be in another epic. ## Dashboard definition The dashboard definition is being defined in https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab/-/issues/378878+ <details><summary>Older dashboard initial definition</summary> We should seek to support the following dashboard definition, a number of terms here follow Cube's [data schema concept](https://cube.dev/docs/schema/fundamentals/concepts): _(This is WIP)_ - Charts - Chart - ID/Name - Type - Potentially configurable, to allow the user to switch between different types of charts depending on how they would like to visualize it - Query - Measures - Dimensions - Time Dimensions - Layout (this requires being able to save changes to a schema-driven dashboard, requisite issues to come) - Size - Order </details> ### A General Dashboard design that could be created (concept)