Forum Discussion

dancox's avatar
dancox
Icon for Neophyte rankNeophyte
2 months ago

UIV4 "Show widget time" option: Last Data Refresh time?

Hi,

Recently we had a request from our Service Desk who asked whether we could show on the dashboard the last time dashboard widget data was refreshed. 

I thought I was on to a winner when I found the "Show widget time" option, but unfortunately this only shows the last time the widget in question was created/had it's last configuration update :(.

I've had a think and I can't think of a good use case for displaying the last configuration update, a "Last data refresh" option would be far more useful for those using LM on a daily basis. I know you can click into a widget and view it's refresh frequency, but this doesn't help our teams who use display only accounts within our office space.

Could Last data refresh replace the last widget config update date/time or could we at least have the option to add this to our dashboards in future?

Thanks!

  • Joe_Williams's avatar
    Joe_Williams
    Icon for Professor rankProfessor
    2 months ago

    A work around could be to add an HTML widget, that just echos the time when it loads/opens. Set that widget to refresh at the same speed as all of your other widgets.

    • Joe_Williams's avatar
      Joe_Williams
      Icon for Professor rankProfessor
      2 months ago

      I can't edit my own post, dumb.

      You can add a text widget, edit the source with something like this:

      <script>
var currentdate = new Date(); 
var datetime = "Last Sync: " + currentdate.getDate() + "/"
                + (currentdate.getMonth()+1)  + "/" 
                + currentdate.getFullYear() + " @ "  
                + currentdate.getHours() + ":"  
                + currentdate.getMinutes() + ":" 
                + currentdate.getSeconds();
</script><script type="text/javascript">
     document.write(datetime)
</script>

      It will show up that way. Adjust the date/time to be your proper format, I just noticed how ugly the date format is but that works.

      • dancox's avatar
        dancox
        Icon for Neophyte rankNeophyte
        26 days ago

        Thanks for this Joe! This would probably have worked for us, however we currently have the "Allow Scripts in Dashboard Text Widget" disabled on our portal for security reasons so unfortunately not viable for us

  • Mike_Moniz's avatar
    Mike_Moniz
    Icon for Professor rankProfessor
    2 months ago

    One thing to also keep in mind (and for others looking at this post) is that the data being reported in a dashboard is not real-time. Each check in LM has it's own collection period. So if a disk check only runs once an hour, you can refresh the dashboard over and over and that data will not update for 60min. This is generally not an issue as checks are smart about how frequently they need to run, but wanted to point it out.

  • Matt_Whitney's avatar
    Matt_Whitney
    Icon for Advisor rankAdvisor
    26 days ago

    The HTML widget that Joe posted is very helpful, thanks for that!

    Regarding the "show widget time" setting, I agree with original poster that there is really no good use case for that and no reason to even have that option. Has caused some confusion for my users as well who thought it meant something else.

    • dancox's avatar
      dancox
      Icon for Neophyte rankNeophyte
      26 days ago

      Thanks Matt, good to know we weren't the only one's who were thrown by this setting!

      Yes the example for us was it was enabled on a dashboard by another support teams who thought that it was the latest data refresh time (rather than what it is, the last configuration update time), which it was quickly flagged with us because they thought their dashboard was not automatically updating.

      It's a confusing option in its current form which I can see very little use case for in comparison to the latest data refresh time, so in my opinion it should be changed as such or removed all together (or maybe even an additional check box option added for either or if they didn't want to remove functionality?!)

      • Joe_Williams's avatar
        Joe_Williams
        Icon for Professor rankProfessor
        26 days ago

        I can see the upside of having it display the last refreshed time or the refresh age. If you haven't I would suggest sending it in as feedback. I have been told it is no longer a black hole.