23Nov

Feature Focus: Extending Software Intelligence insights by leveraging the Custom Dashboards feature

23 November 2020
Posted by Michael MULLER
Other features (application links, custom indicators, etc.)
CAST Highlight comes with a series of dashboards that combine Software Intelligence analytics to help you better manage your application portfolio and make informed decisions. While application portfolio rationalization, software health monitoring, Cloud readiness assessment, and Open Source risk management are typical use cases that are supported through our set of out-of-the-box data visualizations, some advanced users may want to extend the product boundaries and analyze their application portfolio using unique dimensions. This article describes the Custom Dashboards feature.

How to create your first custom dashboard

Custom dashboards can be created by any user. Depending on your user role, your custom dashboard will be visible to you only or to other users. From the menu, go to Dashboards > Custom Dashboard and click on the ‘+’ icon.

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First give your dashboard a name, a quick description that explains what we can learn from this visualization. Select the CAST Highlight indicator to use for each of the three bubble chart dimensions (vertical axis, horizontal axis and bubble size).

As you switch from an indicator to another, the bubble chart is instantly updated to view the change.

Finally – probably the most exciting and important step to ensure that your custom dashboard will provide meaningful insights for other users – you can also define labels for each of the four quadrants that correspond to a possible decision when an application falls in this bucket.

Once you’re done with all the elements of the custom dashboard you’re ready to show your favorite CIO to let him/her know which apps to retire or move to the Cloud, don’t forget to save it by clicking on the disk icon. 😉

List of available widgets in custom dashboards

Most of CAST Highlight metrics and indicators can be used in custom dashboards. In addition, any custom indicator you create would be available as well. See below the list of widgets you can use.

  • Metric tile: display the aggregated score of the selected metric (e.g., Open Source Safety)
  • Description panel: add a text explanation to any other widget
  • Application Results table: a data table with a list of applications with selected metrics
  • Bubble Chart: an application bubble chart with selected metric axes and quadrants
  • Column Chart: a column chart counting applications grouped by selected metric and score range
  • Milestone: add a selected milestone from the Continuous Improvement Tracker feature
  • Quick Portfolio Insights
  • Vulnerabilities: a count and details on CVEs for selected criticality levels (e.g., Critical, KEVs, Advisories, etc.)
  • Licenses: a count of license occurrences across applications for selected license risk levels (e.g., High, Medium, etc.)
  • Trends: a trend chart of the selected metric

Most of CAST Highlight metrics and indicators can be used in custom dashboards. In addition, any custom indicator you create would be available as well.

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