Introducing Workbooks (part 3)

By Ashwin Venugopal -


 

To read part 1, please click here
To read part 2, please click here



Workbook Step Types

Each workbook consists of five different types of steps- text, query, metric, parameters, and link/tabs that are described below:
  • Text- As the name suggests, by clicking on the Add Text link will add a step that can display text with the help of Markdown language. A new step will be added along with an empty textbox to enter your text. After you are done with entering the desired text along with any of the Markdown formatting commands, you can click on the Done Editing button to see your changes. [The Markdown language is text-based language that can be used in various systems, especially GitHub].

  • Query- With the help of KQL queries, you can easily display data from the logs in various formats like grids (or tables), area charts, different types of bar charts, line charts, pie charts, scatter charts, time charts, and tiles. Nowadays, the visualization types are mostly supported with graph and map in preview. After clicking on the Add query link, you will see a header bar whose different fields are as follows-

  1. The Run query button to run the query added to the query window. But if you click the button without any query, then, it will revert an error. 
  2. The Samples button can open a new pane to show some sample code which can be a default query step added to a new workbook created from scratch.
  3. The Data source dropdown will show a list of all the data sources available to query.
  4. The Resource type dropdown can list the type of resources that can be used in the queries.
  5. The Log Analytics workspace dropdown can show a list of all the workspaces available for use.
  6. The Time range dropdown can show the different types of time ranges you can select as next and if value has been selected, then, it will tell your query to only look as far back as the value that has been set, with a few exceptions.        
  • Metric- It helps you to view metrics on different Azure resources but it is not that useful in regard to Microsoft Sentinel.

  • Parameters- There are two types of parameters- one that get set in a parameter step, and others that are populated when an item in a query step is selected. After clicking on the Add parameters link, you can enter the parameters that will be showed in a table, one per row. Add parameter button will help you to add a new parameter whereas the Style dropdown will allow you to change how the parameters are displayed. You don't have click on Done Editing button to see the changes. The header buttons are as follows-

  1. The Edit button can edit the entries in a single selected row.
  2. The Copy button can create a new copy of the parameter.
  3. The Move Up and Move Down buttons can move up and down the parameters in the list. 
  4. The Move to Top and Move to Bottom buttons can move the parameter to the top or bottom of the list.
  5. The Delete button can delete the parameter.  
These parameters can help the users to have a more interactive experience with your workbooks.
  • Links/Tabs- It help you to either display links in various formats or tabs which will help you to open a new website to show more information. The Update Links button can update the links with any modifications that made during the edit process whereas Style dropdown can change how the links will be displayed in a list. The header buttons are as follows from left to right-
  1. The Copy button can create a duplicate of the selected link.
  2. The Insert button can insert a blank row above the selected row to help a new link to be created.
  3. The Move Up and Move Down buttons can move a link up and down in the list.
  4. The Move to Top and Move to Bottom buttons can move the link to the top or bottom of the list.
  5. The Delete button will delete the link.









To read part 1, please click here
To read part 2, please click here



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