Heat Tiles

Overview

What are heat tiles?

Highlight’s heat tiles instantly show a clear status of both network and application services. They are more powerful than a simple traffic light or dashboard display because they show trends too. They are a time-based capability which understands that one incident does not make a network link bad, nor is it good the minute a long-standing problem is resolved.

Highlight uniquely measures performance using problem levels - an ongoing rating that smoothes the display and indicates if a situation is improving or deteriorating. There are 2 types of heat tiles detailed below.

Refer to the Grid View page for information on the grid.

Location tiles

Every location within your network is shown as an individual, summary tile with chevrons to indicate improving or deteriorating issues across stability, load and health metrics

Service tiles

Group watches from any location in your network into a single tile, custom-define thresholds to change tile colour based on the total number of issues

Location tiles

Service tiles

These tiles are created by adding watches to a container and setting it to display as a tile.

Service Tile Example

A service tile for email could comprise the summary status of:

• TCP tests from the local router to the server listening ports (application status)

• Link Health watches for the Internet service

• WAN tests from remote locations to the Data Centre (to assess the impact of the network)

Read more about creating service tiles

Read more about the Highlight Alerting Mechanism

Display Options

Refresh Options

The Status Heat tiles page refreshes every 180 seconds by default, with auto-refresh on.

Alternatively, switching auto refresh off will keep the page in view constant until you select a different position in the network explorer tree.

Use the options panel for services and locations to display only certain colour tiles, adjust the size of your tiles, or group, arrange or filter tiles.

Options panel

Open the options panel using the button.

When the options panel is open the button changes to bold. If you close this panel, it will be closed when you next log in.

Reset all filters

If any settings have changed from default, the "Filter reset" button is enabled (bold).

These options revert to default when you next log in but tile size remains as previously set.

Services

Refer to the Tile colours displayed and Tile resizing sections below for details on these features.

Only selected folder

By default, all service tiles are shown that contain any watch from the currently selected folder or below. By checking this option only services defined in the selected folder are displayed. This setting resets to unchecked when you next log in.

Locations

View

Tiles and Grid buttons are available if grid view has been enabled on the selected folder in the tree. Otherwise, the buttons are hidden and you see location tiles only.

Tiles - By default show location tiles

Grid - Optionally view locations in a grid - find out more about grid view

Arrange

Refer to the Tile colours displayed and Tile resizing sections below for details on these options.

️ Group by folder

By default, all locations below the selected folder are shown unless this option is checked. When checked, multiple location tiles are shown as a single, stacked folder tile, which simplifies the location tile view for large networks. The overall number of issues is shown and can be filtered by stability, load or health. Click a stacked tile to drill down to subfolders and locations.

Sort options

Issues

By default, all issue types are shown: stability, load and health. Use these icons to hide or show one or more issue types. These buttons do not affect green tiles.

React to issues: Any or All

Refer to the section below for details on these options.

Tile colours displayed

A count of heat tiles in each state (red/amber/green) is displayed in the panel header at all times and adapts to the Any/All and Group by folder settings Use the check box on each colour to hide or show those tiles in the display

The "Filter reset" button returns colour settings to their default The display resets to show all colours each time you log in

Tile resizing

Heat tiles are size small by default. Tile widths are:

Location tiles - React to issues: Any or All

Watch-centric (React to issues: ANY)

With this default setting, Highlight's location tiles change colour based on the worst case of any single watch in the location. This view enables service provider operations teams to quickly see locations with issues to be resolved but can occasionally result in a sea of red tiles for relatively minor issues.

With Any selected on the "React to issues" toggle, location tiles are:

Green - no issues

Amber - some watches are in a transitional (amber) state

Red - some watches are in a degraded (red) state

Location-centric (React to issues: ALL)

Highlight provides an alternative view which is based on the location as a whole, rather than on any single watch. In this view an amber tile indicates a location with degraded connectivity which is still online. This view is beneficial to enterprises and service providers wanting a higher-level overview of the entire network.

With All selected on the "React to issues" toggle, location tiles are:

Green - no issues

Amber - some watches have issues and some are green, or all watches are amber

Red - all watches have issues with at least one red

Example

Refer to the troubleshooting location colour for a more detailed explanation of certain scenarios with this functionality.