Ask HN: Anyone Familiar with Building Analytic Dashboards?
7 comments
I would suggest a few things. There are 3 presentations / blog posts that are must reads for this sort of thing...
Measure Anything, Measure Everything[1]
Metrics Driven Engineering[2]
Metrics, Metrics, Everywhere[3]
The most common tool used for this is graphite[4]. Yelp also wrote their own which is nice called Firefly[5]. If you go with graphite like most big companies do, I would strongly suggest looking at graphene[6], gdash[7], giraffe[8], tasseo[9], or cubism[10] dashboard frontends. Graphite has a lot of "devops" community around it.
This should be enough to get you started :)
[1] http://codeascraft.etsy.com/2011/02/15/measure-anything-meas... [2] http://www.slideshare.net/mikebrittain/metricsdriven-enginee... [3] http://pivotallabs.com/139-metrics-metrics-everywhere/ [4] http://graphite.wikidot.com/ [5] https://github.com/Yelp/Firefly [6] http://jondot.github.com/graphene/ [7] http://www.devco.net/archives/2011/10/08/gdash-graphite-dash... [8] https://github.com/kenhub/giraffe [9] https://github.com/obfuscurity/tasseo [10] http://square.github.com/cubism/
The most common tool used for this is graphite[4]. Yelp also wrote their own which is nice called Firefly[5]. If you go with graphite like most big companies do, I would strongly suggest looking at graphene[6], gdash[7], giraffe[8], tasseo[9], or cubism[10] dashboard frontends. Graphite has a lot of "devops" community around it.
This should be enough to get you started :)
[1] http://codeascraft.etsy.com/2011/02/15/measure-anything-meas... [2] http://www.slideshare.net/mikebrittain/metricsdriven-enginee... [3] http://pivotallabs.com/139-metrics-metrics-everywhere/ [4] http://graphite.wikidot.com/ [5] https://github.com/Yelp/Firefly [6] http://jondot.github.com/graphene/ [7] http://www.devco.net/archives/2011/10/08/gdash-graphite-dash... [8] https://github.com/kenhub/giraffe [9] https://github.com/obfuscurity/tasseo [10] http://square.github.com/cubism/
+1 and thanks for the mention (I am the creator of Giraffe).
However, despite my support for open-source tools, and my deep love for graphite, it might in some cases make more sense to use a commercial product. There are many pretty neat commercial dashboards out there which could make the setup and any learning-curve much easier.
Just to name a few I've heard of (never used, and in no particular order): Librato metrics, ducksboard, geckoboard ... and probably many others I missed.
However, despite my support for open-source tools, and my deep love for graphite, it might in some cases make more sense to use a commercial product. There are many pretty neat commercial dashboards out there which could make the setup and any learning-curve much easier.
Just to name a few I've heard of (never used, and in no particular order): Librato metrics, ducksboard, geckoboard ... and probably many others I missed.
Where are you getting hung up?
I have built a fair number of analytic dashboards for a variety of clients. Google Analytics is pretty easy to export data from and integrate to overall. Social is a little more of a pain depending on the source and what you are trying to measure.
Overall I find the hardest part is selecting the metrics to communicate to the client/user so you are providing the most value without noise. Creating the dashboard(s) is usually the easy part, definition and analysis are where you show the clients/users why you are special.
I have built a fair number of analytic dashboards for a variety of clients. Google Analytics is pretty easy to export data from and integrate to overall. Social is a little more of a pain depending on the source and what you are trying to measure.
Overall I find the hardest part is selecting the metrics to communicate to the client/user so you are providing the most value without noise. Creating the dashboard(s) is usually the easy part, definition and analysis are where you show the clients/users why you are special.
I'm being overwhelmed by where to began. I'm a solo founder and I'm building a platform from the ground up but now - this part of the analytics is just so fuzzy to me. Interested in talking via email?
My email is in my profile if you are? I can share some links - I can't post it here because I don't know if the server can take the traffic.
My email is in my profile if you are? I can share some links - I can't post it here because I don't know if the server can take the traffic.
Could be me, but I don't see your email in your profile. From what I remember it has to be in the about section for others to see it. If you want to shoot me an email mine is in the about section of my profile.
Anyone interested or could point me in the right direction to get started? Thanks all!