Collaborate with Boards | Honeycomb

Collaborate with Boards

Boards are a place to save useful graphs you want to retain for later reuse and reference. Similar to conventional dashboards, Boards re-run and get updated results when their Board page is loaded. Use Boards to extend your knowledge to the rest of your team, to your colleagues, or to your future self.

Common use cases for Boards include:

  • Monitoring service health
  • Investigating incidents
  • Saving common queries to share with new teammates

Access Boards 

In the left navigation menu, select Boards with its Bulletin Board icon. When the left navigation menu is compact, only the icon appears.

Screenshot of Boards icon

Create a Board 

From the Query Builder screen:

  1. Build and run a query.

  2. Select Save To at the top of the page.

    Screenshot of Save To menu with Board option selected
  3. Choose Board and a new modal appears. (If you select My Saved Queries, the query is added to My Saved Queries in Query History instead.)

  4. Select Save to new board.

  5. Enter your Query information. If saving a query with a pre-existing name and/or description to a new board, then these fields populate automatically, but can be edited.

  6. In Create a new Board, name your new board. Optionally, give your Board a description to help others find and use it. Determine the board’s Sharing setting - Public to the Team or Limited to Collaborators.

    Screenshot of Save to a New Board modal with Query information and Create a new Board sections
  7. Select Save query to finish.

Select the Boards icon in the left navigation bar to reach the Boards page.

Note
If no previous boards exist, select Run a query to get started and follow the instructions for From Query Builder instead.

From the Boards page:

  1. Select New Board in the top right corner.
  2. Name your new board. Optionally, give your Board a description to help others find and use it. Screenshot of New Board display with Name, Description, and Sharing Status fields
  3. Set the Sharing status of your board to Public to the Team or Limited to Collaborators.
  4. Select Create when done.

Add a Query to an Existing Board 

Similar to Create a Board, to add a query to an existing board:

  1. Name a Query in Query Builder.
  2. Select Save to and a modal appears.
  3. Save to existing board is selected by default. Screenshot of Save to existing board modal with Query information and Board sections
  4. Under Query information, enter query information if required.
  5. Under Board, select a Board from the list of existing boards.
  6. Select Save query to save changes.

Editing a Board 

Edit the following aspects on your Boards:

  • Board name and description: From within the Board, hover over the name or description of the Board and select the pen icon.
  • Query captions: From within the Board, hover over the “Caption this Query” line underneath the query or graph and click the pen icon. If this has already been set, you can still change it.
  • Board permissions: Select the Settings gear icon on the right side to change between Public to the Team or Limited to Collaborators.
  • Queries on the Board: Board queries can be configured to show the result graph, table, or both. Change the query’s display by selecting the gear icon on its upper right corner.
  • Delete a Query: Select the Settings gear icon on the query’s upper right corner, and then select Remove Query.
  • Order of queries/graphs: Hover over the top of the graph or query you want to move until the cursor becomes a four-directional arrow, and then drag and drop it to the new location.
  • Delete the Board: Select the Settings gear button at the top right and select Delete Board.
Tip
Private Boards can be modified by you and any team member added as a collaborator.

Editing a Query on a Board 

To edit a query on an existing Board:

  1. Navigate to the existing Board.
  2. Within the Board, select the target query to edit either through the query name, the graph, or table. Then, the Query Builder display loads with the selected query.
  3. Change the query and select Run Query. The update button will be enabled.
  4. To finish, select Update to update an existing query or Save To to save a new query. Screenshot of Query Builder display with Update and Save To buttons

Sharing Boards 

At creation time, you determine a board’s Sharing status as Public to the Team or Limited to Collaborators. A Public to the Team Board is visible to all Team members. A Limited to Collaborators Board displays a lock next to its name, and its visibility is limited to you, any Collaborators you invited, and Team Owners.

Note
A Team Owner can see all Boards owned by members of their team, Limited or not.

To change a Board’s Sharing status:

  1. Navigate to the Board.
  2. Select Settings at the top right of the screen. A display appears.
  3. Select the toggle under Privacy.
  4. Select Save to save changes to the Board.

Adding Collaborators to a Board 

You can add one or all of your teammates as Collaborators to your Private Boards.

You can add teammates individually by entering their e-mail address, or all teammates by selecting Add All Teammates.

Collaborators can add or remove queries or graphs, and edit the name and description of your Board.

Boards Detail View 

Select a Board from the Boards page to view its details.

Use the time picker to re-run all queries on the board over the same time range. Use the filter box to filter the listed queries. In the upper right corner, use Settings to control certain Board settings. Select One-Column or Multi-Column to change how Boards and their summaries are displayed.

Filter Your Queries on Boards 

Board Filters allow you to apply one or more parameters to all queries on your board. When viewing a Board and its queries, use the Filter By search box to enter your parameter(s). Select Apply to apply the parameter(s) to all queries on your board.

For example, if you have a board called “Errors Overview”, which looks at all the errors occurring in your system, you may optionally want to apply a filter to look at errors occurring in the frontend service that you own. In this case, a filter by service.name=frontend applies that parameter on top of every existing query on the board to output service-specific results.

board_filters_overview

Save filter parameters on Boards 

Filter parameters can also be saved to a Board, so that any user who arrives to the Board in the future will see query results with the filter parameters applied.

To save parameters, first input your desired filter parameters and select Apply. Then, the Save Parameters button will appear as selectable. Select it to save those parameters as the board’s default filters.

board_filters_save_parameters

To override existing saved parameters, modify the filters, select Apply, and then select Save Parameters.

Filter States 

Filter parameters apply across all queries in a board. Since a Board can contain queries on different datasets, applying filter parameters can result in three possible states denoted in a label for each query:

  • All filters applied
  • No filters applied
  • Partially filtered

All filters applied 

When present, all filter parameters are applied successfully on the query.

board_filters_all_filters_applied

No filters applied 

When present, none of the filters are applied to the query because the field(s) do not exist in the query dataset.

board_filters_no_filters_applied

Partially filtered 

If you use more than one filter parameter and only some exist in the query dataset, then the filter parameters are partially applied. Select the label to show the filter parameters that were applied. The parameters that do not exist in the dataset will not be applied.

board_filters_partially_filtered