This reference topic describes the Netcool Agile Service Manager UI screen elements and
associated
functionality.
Resource management page
To access Agile Service Manager topology data, you launch
the Resource management page from the main navigation menu. On the
Resource
management page, you can select either the Applications, Resource groups or Resources
tabs to filter your topology data. Applications and resource groups are displayed in 'Favorites' and
'All results' sections, while resources are listed in table format only. You can toggle the display
of favorites from the default card view to a table view. You can select an application, resource
group or resource, or use the search function.
- Applications tab
- An application is a collection of resource groups, which can each be created and managed from
different sources. When combined with resource-level event correlation and grouping mechanisms,
applications provide rapid visibility of overall states, allowing operators to prioritize work
orders and focus on specific sets of resources that relate to a specific application, thereby
excluding resources and resource groups that are not of interest.
- From the Applications tab of the Resource management page, you can manage
applications, assign them a business criticality, assign them as favorites (by selecting the heart
icon), and display them as topology views.
- Resource groups tab
- Resource groups are used to manage specific resources. You can have resource groups from
different sources within an application, and also separate from an application. Resource groups are
collections of resources that have been collected into a group in order to capture a business or
technical context within the environment for both search and correlation purposes. They are either
created directly from the topological data discovered via observer jobs, or they are created by
defining templates that represent a specific business logic, which dynamically produces resource
groups based on defined criteria, such as a model topology structure or a set of tags. Importantly,
resource groups are dynamic, which means they change as and when the environment is updated, thereby
ensuring the topology data is up-to-date.
- From the Resource groups tab of the Resource management page, you can add
resource groups to applications, assign them a business criticality, assign them as favorites (by
selecting the heart icon), or view them as topologies; however, you cannot create resource groups
from here.
- Resource groups can only be created and managed through a connected inventory provider,
such as Kubernetes or VMware, or through a resource group template, and cannot be created or deleted
from the Resource management page; while the resources within a resource group
must be created and managed through the connection with the inventory provider (that is, an observer
job). If you need to change resources within a resource group, you do not directly manipulate the
resource group. Instead, an administrator user must use the resource group template, or manage the
group within the connected inventory provider.
- Resources tab
- All available resources, their types, and any associated alerts or tags are listed in the All
resources table.
- Resources are represented in topology visualizations, search experience, and APIs, and form the
basis of any topology-based event analytics. Resources are created in the system from observations
of different technologies, or from data entered directly, and can represent a multitude of different
elements, which are interconnected by their specific relationships and related properties.
Relationship types can represent physical connections or logical connections, and all resources
together provide an end-to-end view of an environment across data sources and management silos.
- From the Resources tab of the Resource management page, you can click the
resource name to launch the topology view, assign them a predefined business
criticality, or click More details to open the Resource details sidebar. Optionally,
you can list deleted resources.
To view, render or manage topologies in real time, or compare them to previous versions within
a historical time window, see the topics under
Viewing a topology.
- Search
- As you insert your cursor into the Search field, the five most recent searches are listed, and
can be selected. You can delete a recent search by clicking the delete button
(X) to the right of the suggested search, or click View
all to display all recent searches. When viewing all recent searches, you can filter the
results further using a Search field, or select them and then delete them from the recent searches
list.
- As you type in a search term, suggested search results are listed, both from the topology
database and from recent searches, with your entered text highlighted.
- When you click a search result, the results are listed under the Favorites and All results
sections, separated into Applications, Resource groups and Resources tabs, and search is
closed.
Deleted resources: For resources only, you can select
the Include deleted resources toggle in order to include deleted resources on
the Results page (unless an administrator has disabled that feature). Deleted resources are marked
as such, and the date and time that they were deleted is displayed. If you click View
topology, the resource is displayed in the Topology Viewer with the history timeline
open, and set to 1ms before deletion. When closed, the topology is cleared. When you search for
resources with a previous point in time set in the history timeline, deleted resources are
not returned and the toggle to include them is not available.
- For each search result, the application, resource group or resource name, type and other
properties are displayed.
- If a status other than 'clear' exists for a search result, the maximum severity is displayed in
the information returned, and a color-coded information bar above each result displays all non-clear
statuses (in proportion).
- For resources only you can click More details to display
additional information on the Resource details sidebar, such as its state and
any associated severity levels, or when the resources were previously updated or replaced (or
deleted).
- To render a topology, click the name link.
Resource group restriction: When you load a resource group topology, you are unable to
follow its neighbors, or change its hops, or make use of its advanced filters.
-
Tip: While viewing a topology, you can click View
legend to open a Help panel that describes the visual elements used in the display of
the topology.
Navigation toolbar
The navigation toolbar is displayed at the top of the Topology Viewer and provides access to the
following functionality, or information.
- Topology search
- If you conduct a resource search from the navigation toolbar with a topology already loaded, the
search functionality searches the loaded topology as well as the topology database.
- As you insert your cursor into the Search field, the five most recent searches are listed, and
can be selected. You can delete a recent search by clicking the delete button
(X) to the right of the suggested search, or click View
all to display all recent searches. When viewing all recent searches, you can filter the
results further using a Search field, or select them and then delete them from the Recent searches
list.
- As you type in a search term, a drop-down list is displayed that includes suggested search
results, both from the topology database and from recent searches, with your entered text
highlighted. When you click a search result, the results are listed under the Favorites and All
results sections, separated into Applications, Resource groups and Resources tabs, and search is
closed.
- For the results listed under In view resources:
- If you hover over a search result in this section, the resource is highlighted in the topology
window.
- If you click on a search result, the topology view zooms in on that resource and closes the
search.
- Number of hops
- The number of relationship hops to visualize from the seed resource, with the default set at
'one'.
- You define the number of relationship hops to be performed, which can be from zero to four,
unless this setting has been customized. See the Defining advanced topology settings topic for
more information on customizing the maximum hop count.
- Type of hop
- The type of graph traversal used. The options are:
- Element to element hop type
- This type performs the traversal using all element types in the graph.
- Host to host hop type
- This type generates a view showing host to host connections.
- Element to host hop type
- This type provides an aggregated hop view like the Host to Host type, but also includes the
elements that are used to connect the hosts.
Tip: The URL captures the hopType as 'e2h'.
When launching a view using a direct URL, you can use the hopType=e2h
URL
parameter.
- Filter toggle
- Use this icon to display or hide the filter toolbar. You can filter resources that are displayed
in the topology, or set filters before rendering a topology to prevent a large, resource-intensive
topology from being loaded.
- If a filter has been applied to a displayed topology, the text Filtering
applied is displayed in the status bar at the bottom of the topology.
- Render
- This performs the topology visualization action, rendering the topology based on the settings in
the navigation toolbar. Once rendered, the topology will refresh on a 30 second interval by
default.
- Refresh rate
- You can pause the auto-update refresh, or select a custom interval.
- The default configuration refresh rate is 60s.
- From the Refresh rate drop-down, you can choose either 10s, 30s, 1m, 5m,
or Paused.
-
- Refresh configuration
- Click the Refresh configuration icon to refresh the topology
manually.
- This action refreshes the topology data, and also clears all user-specific session data,
thereby ensuring that any manual configuration changes imported by, for example, the REST API, are
rendered and displayed immediately.
- Sharing options
- You can share a topology either by obtaining a direct URL linking to the topology view, or by
exporting a view of the topology as an image.
- Obtain direct URL
- Open the Sharing options drop-down menu, and then use the
Obtain direct URL option to display the Direct topology
URL dialog.
- The displayed URL captures the current topology configuration, including layout type (layout
orientation is not tracked).
- Click Copy to obtain a direct-launch URL string, then close the dialog
(click X) to return to the previous screen.
- Use the direct-launch URL for quick access to a given topology view.
Tip: You can
share this URL with all DASH users with the required permissions.
- Export as PNG / SVG
- You can share a snapshot of a topology in either PNG or SVG format, for example with someone who
does not have DASH access.
- Open the Sharing options drop-down menu, and then use either the
Export as PNG or the Export as SVG option.
- Select or browse to a program to open the image, or use Save File to save
the image. Specify a name and location, then click Save to create a snapshot
of your topology view.
- You can now share the image as required.
- Opens the Topology configuration
page, from where you can customize a number of Agile Service Manager UI elements.
- Opens the Using resource group templates page already
populated with the current view elements including the preview pane to the right of the Template
builder. From here, you can create a new exact resource group template.
-
Restriction: While viewing topologies, you can only create exact templates based on
element-to-element topologies. The Create exact template option will not
appear in the Settings drop-down for other views.
- Open the Settings drop-down menu, and then use the User
preferences option to access the User preferences window, where you
can make changes to the Updates, Layout and Miscellaneous sections.
- Click Save when done to return to the topology.
- You can customize the following user preferences to suit your requirements:
- Updates
-
- Default auto refresh rate (seconds)
- The rate at which the topology will be updated.
- The default value is 30.
- You must reopen the topology before any changes to this user preference take effect.
- Maximum number of resources to load with auto refresh enabled
- When the resource limit set here is reached, auto-refresh is turned off.
- The maximum value is 2000, and the default is set to 500.
Tip: If you find that the
default value is too high and negatively impacts your topology viewer's performance, reduce this
value.
- Auto render new resources
- Enable this option to display new resources at the next scheduled or ad-hoc refresh as soon as
they are detected.
- Remove deleted topology resources
- Enable this option to remove deleted resources at the next scheduled or ad-hoc refresh.
- Layout
- Set Default layout type including the layout orientation for some of the
layout types.
- You can choose from a number of layout types, and also set the orientation for layouts 4, 6, 7
and 8.
-
Tip: A change to a layout type is tracked in the URL (while layout
orientation is not tracked). You can manually edit your URL to change the layout type display
settings.
- The following numbered layout types are available:
- Layout 1
- A layout that simply displays all resources in a topology without applying a specific layout
structure.
- Layout 2
- A circular layout that is useful when you want to arrange a number of entities by type in a
circular pattern.
- Layout 3
- A grouped layout is useful when you have many linked entities, as it helps you visualize the
entities to which a number of other entities are linked. This layout helps to identify groups of
interconnected entities and the relationships between them.
- Layout 4
- A hierarchical layout that is useful for topologies that contain hierarchical structures, as it
shows how key vertices relate to others with peers in the topology being aligned.
- Layout 5
- A force-directed (or 'peacock') layout is useful when you have many interlinked vertices, which
group the other linked vertices.
- Layout 6
- A planar rank layout is useful when you want to view how the topology relates to a given vertex
in terms of its rank, and also how vertices are layered relative to one another.
- Layout 7
- A rank layout is useful when you want to see how a selected vertex and the vertices immediately
related to it rank relative to the remainder of the topology (up to the specified amount of hops).
The root selection is automatic.
- For example, vertices with high degrees of connectivity outrank lower degrees of connectivity.
This layout ranks the topology automatically around the specified seed vertex.
- Layout 8
- A root rank layout similar to layout 7, except that it treats the selected vertex as the root.
This layout is useful when you want to treat a selected vertex as the root of the tree, with others
being ranked below it.
- Ranks the topology using the selected vertex as the root (root selection: Selection)
- The following orientations for layouts 4, 6, 7 and 8 are available.
- Layout orientation
- For layouts 4, 6, 7 and 8, you can set the following layout orientations:
- Top to bottom
- Bottom to top
- Left to right
- Right to left
- Miscellaneous
-
- Information message auto hide timeout (seconds)
- The number of seconds that information messages are shown for in the UI.
- The default value is 3.
Tip: If you are using a screen reader, it may be helpful to
increase this value to ensure that you do not miss the message.
- Screen reader support for graphical topology
- Disabled by default.
- You can enable the display of additional Help text on screen elements, which can improve the
usability of screen readers.
- You must reopen the page before any changes to this user preference take effect.
- Client side debug logging (on supported browsers)
- Disabled by default.
- If enabled, additional debug output is generated, which you can use for defect isolation.
Tip: Use this for specific defect hunting tasks, and then disable it again. If left enabled,
it can reduce the topology viewer's performance.
- You must reopen the page before any changes to this user preference take effect.
- Maintain zoom level on render configuration changes
- Disabled by default, which means that when a topology is rendered, it is returned to its
original zoom level (that is, 'Zoom fit').
- If enabled, keeps your current zoom level each time the topology is rendered.
- Refreshes the topology, and also clears all user-specific session data, thereby ensuring that
any manual configuration changes imported by, for example, the REST API, are rendered and displayed
immediately.
- Resource group templates
- Opens the Resource group
templates page, where administrators can create and manage templates to generate resource
groups.
Visualization toolbar
The Topology Viewer visualization toolbar is along the top right hand corner (below the
navigation toolbar and down the side) and provides you with access to functionality to manipulate
the topology visualization.
- View legend
- Toggle View Legend to open a Help panel that describes the visual
elements used in the topology to display, for example, added or removed resources, their status, and
types.
- Timeline
- Use this to open or close the History timeline, which shows how a topology has changed over
time.
- The timeline is closed by default.
- Delta
- Use this to shows how a topology has changed between two specific moments in time.
- Delta is off by default.
- Select tool submenu
- When you hover over the Select tool icon, a submenu is displayed from which you can choose the
Select, Pan or Zoom Select tool.
- Select tool
- Use this icon to select individual resources using a mouse click, or to select groups of
resources by creating a selection area (using click-and-drag).
- Pan tool
- Use this icon to pan across the topology using click-and-drag on a blank area of the
visualization panel.
- Zoom select tool
- Use this icon to zoom in on an area of the topology using click-and-drag.
- Zoom in
- Use this icon to zoom in on the displayed topology.
- Zoom out
- Use this icon to zoom out of the displayed topology.
- Zoom fit
- Use this icon to fit the entire topology in the current view panel.
- Overview (mini map)
- Use this toggle to create the overview mini map in the bottom right corner.
- The mini map provides an overview of the entire topology while you zoom in or out of the main
topology. The mini map displays a red rectangle to represent the current topology view.
-
Note: In some browsers the use of the mini map may cause performance
issues when displaying large topologies.
- Layout
- Use this icon to recalculate, and then render the topology layout again.
- You can choose from a number of layout types and orientations.
- Layout 1
- A layout that simply displays all resources in a topology without applying a specific layout
structure.
- Layout 2
- A circular layout that is useful when you want to arrange a number of entities by type in a
circular pattern.
- Layout 3
- A grouped layout is useful when you have many linked entities, as it helps you visualize the
entities to which a number of other entities are linked. This layout helps to identify groups of
interconnected entities and the relationships between them.
- Layout 4
- A hierarchical layout that is useful for topologies that contain hierarchical structures, as it
shows how key vertices relate to others with peers in the topology being aligned.
- Layout 5
- A peacock layout is useful when you have many interlinked vertices, which group the other linked
vertices.
- Layout 6
- A planar rank layout is useful when you want to view how the topology relates to a given vertex
in terms of its rank, and also how vertices are layered relative to one another.
- Layout 7
- A rank layout is useful when you want to see how a selected vertex and the vertices immediately
related to it rank relative to the remainder of the topology (up to the specified amount of hops).
The root selection is automatic.
- For example, vertices with high degrees of connectivity outrank lower degrees of connectivity.
This layout ranks the topology automatically around the specified seed vertex.
- Layout 8
- A root rank layout similar to layout 7, except that it treats the selected vertex as the root.
This layout is useful when you want to treat a selected vertex as the root of the tree, with others
being ranked below it.
- Ranks the topology using the selected vertex as the root (root selection: Selection)
- Layout orientation
- For layouts 4, 6, 7 and 8, you can set the following layout orientations:
- Top to bottom
- Bottom to top
- Left to right
- Right to left
Topology visualization panel
The main panel under the visualization toolbar displays the topology.
The displayed topology consists of resource nodes and the relationship links connecting the
resources. You can interact with these nodes and links using the mouse functionality.
- Dragging a node
- Click and drag a node to move it.
- Selecting a node
- Selection of a node highlights the node, and emphasizes its first-order connections by fading
all other resources.
- Context menu (right-click)
- You open the context menu using the right-click function. The context menu provides access to
the resource-specific actions you can perform, including access to any .
- For resource entities, you can perform the following:
- Resource details
- Properties tab: Displays a window that shows all the current stored
properties for the specified resource in tabular and JSON format.
If opened from the
Resource management dashboard, the resource name is an active link that opens a
topology view of the resource in context.
When selected while viewing a topology
history with delta mode On, the Resource details window displays the properties
of the resource at both the reference time and at the delta time.
'Related
applications' and 'Related resource groups' are only displayed when not in historical mode
Toggle the Show JSON switch On or Off to display the properties
in JSON format.
- Data origin tab: Displays the point of origin of the resource data, such
as a specific observer job.
If you have the appropriate user permission, such as the
administrator role, the observer job name is an active link, which opens the observer job page from
where you can re-run the job, view its history, or edit the job.
- Related applications tab: Displays all related applications as active
links, which open the application topologies in new windows.
Also lists the group type,
number of groups, status, and tags.
- Related resource groups tab: Displays all related resource groups as
active links, which open the resource group topologies in new windows.
Also lists the
resource type, number of resources, status, and tags.
- Resource status tab: Displays a dialog that shows the time-stamped
statuses related to the specified resource in table format.
The Severity and Time
columns can be sorted, and the moment (that is, the historical time point) that Resource status was
selected is also time-stamped.
You can use the Show active only
toggle to remove inactive statuses.
In addition, if any status tools have been defined,
the status tool selector (three dots) is displayed next to the resource's statuses. Click the status
tool selector to display a list of any status tools that have been defined, and then click the
specific tool to run it. Status tools are only displayed for the states that were specified when the
tools were defined.
The severity of a status ranges from 'clear' (white tick on a
green square) to 'critical' (white cross on a red circle).
Table 1. Severity levels
Icon |
Severity |
|
clear |
|
indeterminate |
|
information |
|
warning |
|
minor |
|
major |
|
critical |
Tip: If statuses related to a specific resource are available, the
resource will be marked with an icon depicting the status severity level, and the Resource status
tab will appear on the Resource details window, accessible via the resource
context menu.
- Comments
- When selected, this displays any comments recorded against the resource.
- By default, resource comments are displayed by date in ascending order. You can sort them in the
following way:
- Oldest first
- Newest first
- User Id (A to Z)
- User Id (Z to A)
- Users with the inasm_operator role can view comments, but not add any. Users with inasm_editor
or inasm_admin roles can also add new comments. See the Configuring DASH user roles topic for more information on
assigning user roles.
- To add a new comment, enter text into the New comment field, and then
click Add comment to save.
- Assign criticality
- Business criticality sets the priority level for a resource (or application, or resource group).
- To assign a priority, select a definition from the Business criticality
drop-down, then click Save.
- To remove a business criticality, select Unassigned.
Remember: Business criticality definitions must be created by an administrator user before you can assign
them to a resource, as described in
Defining business criticality.
- Build a template
- Opens the Create a new template dialog, from where you can create a new resource group
template.
- Get Neighbors
- When selected, opens a menu that displays the resource types of all the neighboring resources.
Each resource type lists the number of resources of that type, as well as the maximum severity
associated with each type.
- You can choose to get All neighbors of the selected resource, or choose a
specific resource to add to the topology using the Choose neighbor option.
This
lets you expand the topology in controlled, incremental steps.
- Selecting Get neighbors overrides any existing filters.
- You can Undo the last neighbor request made.
- Follow relationship
- When selected, opens a menu that displays all adjacent relationship types.
- Each relationship type lists the number of relationships of that type, as well as the maximum
severity associated with each type.
- You can choose to follow all relationships, or only the neighbors of a specific type.
- Show last change in timeline
- When selected, will display the history timeline depicting the most recent change made to the
resource.
- Show first change in timeline
- When selected, will display the history timeline depicting the first change made to the
resource.
- Find path
- When selected, opens the Path tool dialog, from where you can define the
criteria for the system to find the shortest path between two resources in your topology. See the
Using the Path tool topic for more
information.
- Recenter view
- When selected, this updates the displayed topology with the specified resource as seed.
- Delete resource
- Removes the resource from the topology.
- Topology Swagger
- Opens the Swagger UI.
-
- Swagger
- Agile Service Manager uses Swagger for automated documentation generation and utilizes a Swagger
server for each micro-service.
- You can access and explore the REST APIs of the topology service and observers using Swagger via
the proxy service.
- For more information, see Swagger reference.
- Information bar
- A section at the bottom of the screen displays the current status of the rendered topology.
- A timestamp on the left of the information bar indicates the time of the most recent refresh. If
two time periods are being compared, both will be indicated.
- Additional information on the right describes the number of resources rendered, their
relationships, whether they were added or removed since the last refresh, and whether a filter has
been applied.
Filter toolbar
Open and close the Filter toolbar using the Filter toggle in the
Navigation toolbar (along the top). When you have filtered your topology, click
Close to remove the toolbar from view.
The Filter toolbar is displayed as a panel on the right-hand side of the
page, and consists of a
Simple and an
Advanced tab. If selected, each tab provides you
with access to the following expandable lists of filters:
- Resource types
- Relationship types
- Resource severity
Any resource or relationship types that have been excluded from view in order to optimize
performance when rendering topologies are listed here.
The seed resource of
a topology can not be blocked, and neither can resource groups.Note: You can override the exclusion using the context menu functionality.
- If you are filtering a topology before rendering it: All types are displayed, except
those that have been excluded. After rendering the topology, you can toggle the Show all
types switch so that only types relevant to your topology are displayed.
- If you are filtering a topology already displayed in the viewer: Only types relevant to
your topology are displayed, for example host,
ipaddress, or operatingsystem. You can toggle the
Show all types switch so that all types are listed (apart from the excluded
types).
- Simple tab
- When you use the Simple tab, all specified types are removed from view, including the seed
resource.
- It only removes the resources matching that type, leaving the resources below, or further
out from that type, based on topology traversals.
- By default, all types are On. Use the Off toggle to remove
specific types from your view.
- Advanced tab
- The Advanced tab performs a server-side topology-based filter action.
- If you change the topology, you can set filters before you render the topology to prevent a
potentially large, resource-intensive topology from being loaded in full.
- It can exclude or include types:
- Exclude removes the resources matching that type, as well as all resources below
that type. However, the seed resource is not removed from view, even if it is of a type
selected for removal.
- Include displays the selected types in the topology.
- Tips
-
Reset or invert all filters: Click Reset to
switch all types back on, or click Invert to invert your selection of types
filtered.
-
Hover to highlight: When a topology is displayed, hover over one of
the filtering type options to highlight them in the topology.
Topology history toolbar
Open and close the Topology history across the bottom of the screen using the
Timeline toggle on the Topology Visualization toolbar (top right corner). You
can also hide the Topology History toolbar by clicking X, which also returns
the topology to normal (update) mode.
- Timeline
- The Timeline toggle switched the topology between the 'update' mode and
the 'history' mode, which is displayed across the bottom of the screen.
- A topology is displayed in update mode by default with delta mode set to
Off. You use a time pin to control the topology shown. When you move a pin,
the topology updates to show the topology representation at that time.
- While viewing the timeline in update mode with delta mode set to Off,
only a single time pin is displayed.
-
- Delta mode
- You toggle delta mode on and off using the Delta switch above the
topology.
- When delta mode is On with the timeline toggle
Off, differences in topology are displayed via purple plus or minus symbols
next to the affected resource.
- When delta mode is On with timeline toggle On, you
can compare two time points to view differences in topology. Historical change indicators (blue
dots) are displayed next to each affected resource.
Note: For efficiency reasons, historical change
indicators are only displayed for topologies with fifty or fewer resources. You can reduce (but not
increase) this default by changing the value for the
Historical change
threshold setting as described in
Defining advanced topology settings.
-
- Lock time pin
- Click the Lock icon on a time pin's head to lock a time point in place as
a reference point, and then use the second time slider to view topology changes.
- Compare resource properties
- Click Resource details on a resource's context menu to compare the
resource's data at the two selected time points. You can view and compare the resource's property
names and values in table format, or JSON format (using the Show JSON
toggle).
- While viewing the timeline in update mode with delta mode set to On, any
changes to the topology history are displayed on the right hand side of the timeline, with the time
pins moving apart at set intervals. By clicking the Reset to now icon, you
reset the endpoint to 'now' and the pins form a single line again.
- While in delta mode you can move both pins to show a comparison between the earliest pin and the
latest. The timeline shows the historic changes for a single selected resource, which is indicated
in the timeline title. You can lock one of the time pins in place to be a reference point.
- To view the timeline for a different resource, you click on it, and the heading above the
timeline changes to display the name of the selected resource. If you click on the heading, the
topology centers (and zooms into) the selected resource.
- The history timeline is displayed above a secondary time bar, which displays a larger time
segment and indicates how much of it is depicted in the main timeline. You can use the jump buttons
to move back and forth along the timeline, or jump to the current time.
- You can use the time picker, which opens a calendar and clock, to move to a specific second in
time.
- To view changes made during a specific time period, use the two time sliders to set the time
period. You can zoom in and out to increase or decrease the granularity using the + and - buttons on
the right, or by double-clicking within a time frame. The most granular level you can display is an
interval of one second. The granularity is depicted with time indicators and parallel bars, which
form 'buckets' that contain the recorded resource change event details.
- The timeline displays changes to a resource's state, properties, and its relationships with
other resources. These changes are displayed through color-coded bars and dash lines, and are
elaborated on in a tooltip displayed when you hover over the change. You can exclude one or more of
these from display.
- Resource state changes
- The timeline displays the number of state changes a resource has undergone.
- Resource property changes
- The timeline displays the number of times that resource properties were changed.
- Each time that property changes were made is displayed as one property change event regardless
of whether one or more properties were changed at the time.
- Resource relationship changes
- The number of relationships with neighboring resources are displayed, and whether these were
changed.
- The timeline displays when relationships with other resources were changed, and also whether
these changes were the removal or addition of a relationship, or the modification of an existing
relationship.
Update manager
If auto-updates have been turned off, the Update Manager informs you if
new resources have been detected. It allows you to continue working with your current topology until
you are ready to integrate the new resources into the view.
The Update Manager is displayed in the bottom right of the screen.
The Update Manager provides you with the following options:
- Show details
- Displays additional resource information.
- Render
- Integrates the new resources into the topology.
- Choosing this option will recalculate the topology layout based on your current display
settings, and may therefore adjust the displayed topology significantly.
- Cogwheel icon
- When clicked, provides you with quick access to change your user preferences:
- Enable auto-refresh: Switches auto-refresh back on, and disables the Update Manager.
- Remove deleted resources: Removes the deleted resources from your topology view when the
next topology update occurs.
- Hide
- Reduces the Update Manager to a small purple icon that does not obstruct your current topology
view.
- When you are ready to deal with the new resources, click on the icon to display the Update
Manager again.