[Dashboards] Collapsible Panels

[spalger]

Inspired by #597

Kibana 3 used rows to group panels, but dashboard panels in Kibana 4 are completely independant. Perhaps we could create multiple dashboards/gridster grids within a single dashboard, and allow collapsing them independently.

[farracha]

+1 It would make dashboard a lot more manageable

[mkliu]

+1. That way i don't have to navigate around different dashboards. Otherwise if I put everything in the same dashboard it's wasting time fetching data that I don't want.

[martinhynar]

+1 Collapsing and grouping would be really welcome. Also, assuming that collapsed components will not load data.

[warpkanal]

A collapsible area would definitely help for more complex dashboards, esp. as I have one panel in K3 that puts quite some heavy load on ES so I have it collapsed by default in my dashboards. I'm missing this the same way I miss #1583.

[tojocky]

Any news?

[pemontto]

:+1: I'd like to have maps easily accessible for users of my dashboard but start with them minimised/collapsed because their queries can reduce the responsiveness of the dashboard.

[elvarb]

Sometimes you sart in a specific dashboard full of details but as you drill down trying to debug an issue some visualization panels become unnecessary. In Kibana3 you could either group panels in sections and then close some if needed.

A minimize button for each visualization would be needed to get the same functionality and an added bonus would be to set a default setting for each panel. In the case of @pemontto having a map visualization minimized by default when viewing the dashboard should satisfy that need.

[pemontto]

I'd expect there would be some difficulty around minimising panels while keeping your layout unless there were as previously mentioned some modular construct vaguely similar to the semi-despised column panel back in Kibana3. Performance wise another option would be to have a enable/disable toggle per panel that would say keep them in place but just blank them out when disabled.

[rashidkpc]

Would be nice to be able to make the group a collection of tabs on a single panel too.

[tbragin]

via @shubhambits in #8298:

So lets say, I have a dashboard, and i want to associate a couple of visualizations together. By together i mean that an add of a filter on one visualization in a dashboard should be reflected on a group of visualizations and not all of the visuals in the dashboard. Now i can do that while keeping these group of visuals in a separate dashboard but i also want to see the metrics without reflecting the filter in them.

[tbragin]

From #3725:

via @jccq:

I run out of space pretty quickly with all the cool visualizations possible. Can we have a simple "minimize" button to turn a view into a simple title bar? this would allow one to stack several views and just open those that are of interest at the moment. Also it would be nice to have a configurable, finer grid for snapping components together.

via @SleeperSmith

Also I'd like to add it could potentially be a performance enhancement too as the "minimized" view would not need to be loaded.

via @swisslog-jenkins

Thank you for giving thoughts into this:

• From my point of view "maximize" and "restore down" would completely fulfill my requirements.
• Collapsing without rearranging the other panels doesn't make a lot of sense.
• What would be the use case for having a collapsed panel?

via @fbaligand

From my point of view, it is useful to have both "minimize" and "maximize" features.

• minimize is really useful when, at some time, you want to focus on some visualizations, but not all. And it allows to have better performance when you make some filtering on dashboard (time, term, ...) because "minimized" visualizations are not loaded. This is even more relevant when you activate auto-refresh with short time.
• maximize is useful when you want specifically to focus on one visualization.

Globally, I think really that this feature would be really useful and is not complicated to do. And Kibana 3 did that, and Timelion does that (at least maximize), and Grafana does that.

[jccq]

@tbragin great to see the maximize being address.

It would be fantastic to use the momentum and get this in 5.3. There are great usability advantages. Even if you minimixe and only "pull up" and minimally rearrange whatever is under the minimized panel it will reduce visual overaload and in combination with the MAXIMIZE its really poweful, one can have a fancy complex visualization "parked" for use somewhere. TIA

[jonesn]

+1

[M22an]

This would be really useful for us as well. Any news on when this is going to be done ?!?

[alepuccetti]

Reporting from #14855 as asked by @epixa

We could abstract the panel concept to a general container/group. In this way, users can group any set of visualizations (potentially filters and searches). Also, groups could contain groups. This will provide a very flexible and, in my opinion, easily understandable way to represent relationships between visualizations, filters, searches.

Summary:

• Each visualization is a group of one (basic group).
• Multiple groups can be grouped in one group.
• Groups can be activated/deactivated/shown/hidden.

In this approach, a group is a simple list of object (visualizations, filters, searches) and an action (activate/deactivate) will be propagated to all the objects in the group. So you will not activate/deactivate the group itself but all the contained objects.

I think this approach provides a more flexibility without introducing a new UI concept (panels). In fact, if an object (visualization, filter, searches) would expose some properties like:

• activate/deactivate
• collapse/show
• ...

The group could toggle them independently by the fact the all the objects expose the same kind of properties. Example: firing a collapseaction on a filter will not do anything but on a visualization will result in the UI object to collapse.

Other steps to explore:

• How to form a group.
• How to show available groups and actions to perform on them.

Final note: Because this design is fairly abstract, it is not necessarily a replacement of panels. They can coexist serving different purposes. But I think that collapse/show and activate/deactivate functionalities should be embedded in visualization, filter, and searches instead of in a wrapper.

I hope this explanation was clear enough. If anyone has any questions give me a shout.

[fbaligand]

@alepuccetti Your suggestion is interesting and powerful because abstract to many UI components.

That said, since this issue exists since 2014, maybe it is too ambitious for a first version of this feature ? Except if you plan to make a PR that implements this ?

Personally, I would love if we could simply collapse visualizations.

Then, maybe, the idea to separate show/hide and activate/disable features is too complex ? Up to me, hide a visualization implies to disable it (I mean no ES query + no result rendering).

[alepuccetti]

@fbaligand

That said, since this issue exists since 2014, maybe it is too ambitious for a first version of this feature ?

I agree with this, I opened an issue about single visualization enable/disable but got redirected here.

Except if you plan to make a PR that implements this ?

Unfortunately, this task is way out my JS ability 😓.

Then, maybe, the idea to separate show/hide and activate/disable features is too complex ?

I am not sure how much difficult would be hide/show visualizations, but I guess it is better done the job once and do it right.

Up to me, hide a visualization implies to disable it (I mean no ES query + no result rendering).

Of course, if a visualization is collapsed/deactivated the associated query should not fire.

I think that this is a part of a much bigger work:

1. Have each visualization's query sent to elasticsearch in a separate request (now there are submitted all together with a _msearch). Some discussion about it at #14750.
2. Give the ability to single visualization to be activated/deactivated collapsed/shown.
3. Work on the functionalities to build on top of it (groups, panels, and whatnot).

[Sjaak01]

Is there any progress on this item? It think it would be a great enhancement. Especially since we now have so many great visualizations. My dashboards get quite big and being able to collapse certain groups of visualizations would really help making it easier to go through our data.

[spyderz42]

Grouping would be a great feature as well, but it sounds more complicated than just adding a collapse/minimize option to various panels. Would splitting this into 2 tickets allow the collapse to be done?

[fbaligand]

I agree. This is relevant!

[k0nficjusz]

Is there any progress on this feature? For big dashboards it is really needed.

[fbaligand]

I fully agree with @k0nficjusz The minimum feature would be to be able to minimize panels individually on a dashboard.

[ThomThomson]

Blocked on https://github.com/elastic/kibana/issues/88710

[thomasneirynck]

Added this to "Fast Dashboards" project. Collapsing panels should also prevent widgets from issuing ES-queries/rendering, therefor improving the overall perceived performance of a Dashboards.

[FizaBeg]

Any Update on this ?

+1 It would make dashboard more manageable and precise

[Jasm-z]

Any Update on this?

+1 I have a customer also asking for this feature.

[ThomThomson]

Any Update on this?

Quick update: We're working on a new layout engine which should allow for this feature. It's too early to give an estimated release version, but we'll post updates here as we have them.

[teresaalvarezsoler]

Closing this issue in favour of https://github.com/elastic/kibana/issues/190342