Dash is ready for Public Beta, with a brand new look!

June 24 2009, 11:27am

I know we have been quiet for a while, but we have been working diligently to make Dash even better. Now we are ready to show off some of those results.

Those of you who have been using Dash will have seen some significant changes recently. If you’re new to Dash, keep reading for some of the highlights of our redesign effort.

First of all, a couple of nomenclature changes.

Applications are now Sources. A Source is anything that you want to get data out of and put into Dash. Previously, we used the term Application, but we realized with the extensibility of Dash, applications were only a subset of what you could monitor. Sources include applications, but may include other services, like Google Analytics, GetSatisfaction, or even your Cucumber test suite.

Recipes are now Packages. We’re brainstorming ways to improve the way custom metrics and reports are collected and organized. We’ll post more about it here when we’ve got a better idea about how it’s going to shape up. In the mean-time, rest assured we’ll provide an upgrade path for anyone who has already built custom metrics or wants to get started now.

A new look and new features

We’ve made the look and feel of Dash cleaner, more elegant, and more pleasant to use.

Improved Navigation: The redesign of Dash has primarily been about making it easier to move around; we’ve worked hard to improve the navigation. The tabs and breadcrumbs make it easy to move around and always find your way home. We’ve also made important features even easier to access; for example, you can select or add a new Report or Source from any page.

Quick Access to Metrics: We added a Metrics tab where you can see exactly what data is being collected from your Sources, and filter on how fresh or stale the data is. You can view ad hoc metrics without adding them to a report. Once you view the metric, you can easily add the metric to a report.

Most of the functional changes you’ll see in this release center around our reports; just about everything reports-related has been streamlined.

Managing Reports: Now, you can share a report by clicking on the sharing icon in the report name header, and you can choose your Home Report (the report you see after sign-in or by clicking on the Dash logo). The buttons are located right where you need them, from any report.

Creating Reports: To make viewing new sources faster than ever, we now notify you when you have a source with fresh data that is not visible in any report. From this notification, you can create a report pre-populated with all the data from that source. Additionally, when creating a new report you can use this same ability to pre-populate the report with all the data from a source of your choosing.

Some things never change

You can still measure anything by creating your own custom metrics. You can still decide how you want to receive your event notifications (email, Campfire, Twitter). You decide what is important. You can still create your own packages to collect data from other sources. You don’t have to wait for us to do it.

So check out the all new Dash and tell us what you think!