Get end-to-end insights and metrics with Splunk
If you’re looking to get serious about your metrics, security and analytics, you’ll want to take a look at Splunk. It’s a platform that’s able to integrate with thousands of other applications to create a centralised solution for all of your business insights, and with their end-to-end integrations and fully automated operations you can keep your business safe while you reap the benefits of the visibility Splunk offers, as well as using their predictive intelligence — it’s seriously clever stuff!
Don’t be put off by the complexity of it all though; while there is a pretty steep learning curve, Splunk has excellent documentation, along with a Get Started guide. They also have an engaged community and a great support team to help you with any questions along the way.
Splunk and Fugo TV Dashboards
Once you’ve invested time and money into getting your Splunk platform up and running, collating data from all around your business into intelligent dashboards, it’s time to make the most of it. The most effective dashboards empower teams by giving them shared visibility and the ability to course-correct or make changes that improve their work.
The best way to give a team shared visibility of a dashboard is to display it on a workplace TV screen or other digital signage in their offices. This is where the TV Dashboards feature from Fugo CMS comes in handy; it’s purpose-built for this, it’s easy to use, and — most importantly — it’s built with security in mind.
While other dashboard solutions can open up holes in your security by creating a URL that’s open to anybody on the internet to display your dashboard, or by storing your access credentials on an unsecured third-party device which can be hacked, lost or stolen, the TV Dashboards feature within Fugo asks you to walk through a login process and navigate to your dashboard. It then records these steps, encrypts them, and sends them to a private and secured Cloud server. When you need to display the most up-to-date data in your dashboard, that Cloud server repeats the steps and sends a screenshot through to the Fugo CMS, which gets displayed on your workplace screens. This keeps your analytics private, and your data safe!
Best Practices for using Splunk with Fugo CMS
Integrating your Splunk dashboard with Fugo CMS is a breeze - but before we get into the walkthrough, let’s take a look at some best practices and recommendations for connecting any third-party dashboard with Fugo TV Dashboards:
1. Create a service account:
We've worked hard to develop the TV dashboards feature so that your sensitive data is completely secure. But as an extra precaution we highly recommend using a 'least privileged' service account when setting up your dashboards - this is usually an account that has read-only permissions for the dashboards you want to display on your screen(s.) You can read more about how to set up a service account with Google here.
2. Start with your dashboard URL
It's often the case that you can navigate directly to your target dashboard's URL when creating a new dashboard in Fugo. This will require you to log in, and then you’ll be redirected back to your destination. This is the quickest and most reliable journey you can make in Fugo Dashboards as it cuts out unnecessary steps in your journey.
Connect your screens to a Fugo account
2.1 Log into your Fugo Account. If you don’t have an account yet, you can start your 14-day free trial here.
Note: TV Dashboards are a part of Fugo's Business Plan. During your free trial, you can create one dashboard. To create any more, you will need to upgrade your plan.
2.2 Make sure your screen(s) are connected to Fugo CMS. If you haven’t connected your screen(s) yet, you can find the instructions for that here.
Create a new dashboard
2.3 Click Dashboards in the top navigation bar to go to your Dashboard library. If you have not created any dashboards yet, this page will be empty.
2.4 Click Create Dashboard to get started. This will take you to the New Dashboard recorder page where you will follow the instructions to capture and preview your dashboard before publishing it to screen.
2.5 We recommend naming your dashboard something easy to remember and relevant (I’ve named this Splunk Dashboard). You’ll need to paste your Splunk home URL in to the URL box and click Go.
2.6 An incognito window will open with the Splunk Cloud login. You should enter your login details here and click Sign In to log in as usual.
2.7 Once you’re logged in, you’ll see your Splunk home screen. On the right hand side of the original browser window, you’ll see the Fugo Recorder has started to note down all of the interactions and each step you’ve taken so that it can repeat them later when it fetches your dashboard remotely.
From the Splunk home screen, select Search & Reporting.
2.8 Next, select Dashboards from the top pane.
2.9 Now you’re looking at your Dashboards screen. You can pick your dashboard from the table displayed, but we would recommend searching for your dashboard if you can. This helps the Fugo Recorder to be able to more easily recreate your steps and reach the correct dashboard, even if the order of our dashboards in the table changes.
2.10 Search for your dashboard using the search box, and select it from the list.
2.11 Now that you’re viewing your dashboard, select Capture Dashboard from the bottom pane to let the Fugo Recorder know that you’ve reached the final step and want to display this screen on your digital signage or workplace TV screens.
💡 You can also select the Element Screenshot button to select a specific region on the screen. This can be helpful in neatening up your dashboard, removing the Splunk interface and branding along the top.
2.12 The incognito window will close, and you’ll see a preview screen while you wait for the Fugo Recorder to run through the steps and return a screenshot of your dashboard. This can take a few minutes, so don’t worry if it takes longer than you were expecting!
2.13 When your dashboard shows up in the preview area and you’re happy with how everything looks, simply click the Publish button in the bottom right. This will open up the Publishing box, which lets you immediately display your dashboard on existing screens, add a new screen to display your dashboard on, publish your dashboard into existing playlists, or add a new playlist straight from this popup. You can also select Save to come back to this dashboard later.
Tips and Tricks for your Splunk Dashboard
Great! You’ve got your dashboard sorted and displaying on the TV screens in your workplace through Fugo — what’s next? Next, you need to make sure your dashboard is the best it can be, and there’s quite a lot that goes into that, especially when you’re working with dashboards that are being displayed on shared screens. We’ve put together some of the main things to bear in mind when you’re building your dashboard below:
Less is More. When you’re building out your dashboard, you should sit down with the team that will be viewing it every day and work out what your key performance indicators are. You need to whittle your metrics down to only the most important ones because if you have dozens of metrics all fighting for screen space it’s going to be difficult for anybody to read and understand your dashboard — especially if it’s on a screen across the office. Don’t worry though - once you’ve decided the KPIs with your team, you can go back and tweak based on feedback from them.
Be Easy on the Eyes. We all know what it’s like to finish a day at work in front of screens with a pounding headache and sore eyes. When you’re creating your Splunk dashboard, try to use big, clear fonts and colours that don’t clash. It’s also important to make sure that any text you’re using stands out easily against the background - so no blue text on red backgrounds or black backgrounds behind grey text! You should also try to help your viewers understand generally how things are going without having to look closer, so making use of green or red coloration to indicate positive or negative changes can be very helpful.
Think About Your Data. When you’re compiling your metrics, think about the best way to display them. Would this information work better in a table, or is a bar graph the way to go? Line graphs can be really helpful for contextualising current data with historical data, where bar graphs might struggle. In addition to considering the format you’re displaying your info in, you should also aim to cut out any unnecessary information; it’s generally a good idea to round your decimals to no more than two or three decimal places if you can, and use clear abbreviations to label axes on graphs to reduce information overload.
If you’re looking to get a bit more hands-on with some of Splunks more advanced features, you can dig in to their fantastic documentation and resources section, or make use of the Splunk Lantern, which is a collection of Splunk-specific guidance put together by IT pros.
Have we missed anything from this guide? Is there something we should’ve covered? If you have any feedback, or any further questions, please don’t hesitate to get in touch with our support team - you can reach them by emailing support@fugo.ai.