Insights overview

Insights are dashboards that make it easy to visualize and interpret metrics that are captured by SEI. With a variety of out-of-the-box widgets, you can create Insights that show the data you care about most and help you understand your engineering team's effectiveness and efficiency.

This topic explains how to create and view Insights.

View Insights

The primary way to access Insights is through the Project.

Log in to SEI and select your project.
If multiple projects are enabled for your organization, you will need to select a project to proceed further.

Note: Admins can access the Manage Workspace options directly from this page

Select a Collection.

Select the Insight under the Select an Insight section The Insights available for each Collection depend on the Insight associations.

To switch projects use the Project selection drop-down navigation at the top right corner. Similarly to switch Collections, use the Collection options on the navigation menu. You can also use the breadcrumbs in the Insights header to navigate up through the Collection hierarchy.

If integration monitoring is enabled, you can view the integration status in the Insights header.

Integrations for the widgets in an Insight are implicitly inherited from the Collection, which in turn are inherited from the project by the Collections.

Attempting to access unrecognized links for Insights will navigate the user to the Home page to select a Collection and Insight.
Choosing the SEI icon or the Home page icon from the left navigation menu will navigate you to the Collection category selection page if the project selection was made already.
Choosing the Insight icon will navigate the user to the default insight or to the first insight available for the first Collection category for that project.
On subsequent logins, to enable continuity of thought process and action, you will be automatically redirected to the insight you had recently accessed before logoff.

You can switch to a different insight by choosing a different insight shown in the insight header or from the All Insights dropdown.

The default dashboard for a Collection is distinguished by a "Default" label.
Admins can access the Manage Insights option from the All Insights dropdown.

You can also access the Insights from the Insights List page

Select Manage Insights from the All Insights selection dropdown from the insights header

Select an Insight to view

Select a Collection category
Select a Collection to navigate to the insight selected from step 2.

Explore Data

Once you're viewing an Insight, you can explore the widgets and interact with the data.

WHERE DOES THE DATA COME FROM?

Widgets get data from integrations, which are inherited from the Collections associated with Insights. In turn, Collections inherit integrations from their associated project, because integrations are configured at the project level. For more information about this hierarchy and configuring Collections, go to Collections.

You can also configure individual metrics and widgets to specify what data is used in calculations, how data is presented, and other criteria. For more information, go to Metrics and Reports.

Set the Insight time

Insight time is the time range selected by the user viewing an Insight. Widgets and reports must be configured to the Use Insight Time field for their data to update when you change the Insight time range.

If a widget or report uses a specific time range, changing the Insight time has no impact on the data shown by that widget or report.

Drill down into data

Some widgets allow you to drill down into data. For example, you can select a segment of a bar on a bar chart to examine the data for that segment.

Create Insights

Go to any Insight. For instructions, go to View Insights.
In the header, select All Insights, and then select Manage Insights.

Select New Insight.

Enter a Name for the Insight.
Under Parameters, you can modify the following settings:
- Insight Time Range: You can enable Insight time, which is the time range selected by the user when viewing an Insight.
- Effort Investment Profile and Effort Investment Units are used for Business Alignment Insights and DORA Metrics Insights.

Select at least one Collection category to associate with this Insight. All Collections and child Collections under the selected category are automatically associated with the Insight. You can refine the Insight associations after initial Insight creation. If you want to examine Collections under a certain Collection category, select View Collections on the Collections Categories dropdown menu.

Select Create to save the Insight. From here, you can add widgets and design your dashboard based on the requirements.

Add reports

Widgets are the parts of your Insight that contain data. Widgets can present a single statistic or they can present charts, graphs, and tables that compare or combine multiple statistics.

To add widgets to Insights:

Go to the Insight where you want to add the widget. Make sure you are in the correct project.
Select Settings, and then select Add Widget.
Select the widget that you want to add from the Frequently Used or Advanced tab.
Configure the widget settings. For information about configuring specific widgets go to Metrics and Reports.
Place the widget in the insight and save.

WHERE DOES THE DATA IN WIDGETS COME FROM?

Widgets get data from integrations, which are inherited from the Collection associated with Insight. In turn, Collection inherits integrations from their associated project, because integrations are configured at the project level. For more information about this hierarchy and configuring Collections, go to Projects and Collections.

If the required integration for a widget is not created (e.g., PagerDuty), or if the associated profile for DORA is not available, widgets are automatically placed in the Advanced tab for easy access. All widgets that are temporarily inaccessible due to either integration unavailability or due to the Collection not being associated with a particular tool or integration are available here.

Apart from widgets in the Advanced tab, all other widgets are available under the Frequently Used tab for quick and convenient access.

You can also configure individual metrics and widgets to specify what data is used in calculations, how data is presented, and other criteria. For more information, go to Metrics and Reports.

Manage Insights associations

You can manage the Collections associated with Insights from the Edit Collection page, and edit the Insights settings. For more information about this option, go to Managing Insights associations in Manage Collections.

Authentication, access, and user management are part of the SEI Platform. Permissions granted to users depends on their assigned user role as per the SEI RBAC, which are controlled at the account level in SEI.

For more information about authentication, access, and user management, go to the following:

User Roles in SEI

Popular Insights

The following five Insights are the most frequently used on SEI:

DORA Metrics
Dev Insights
Business Alignment
Trellis
Planning Insights

DORA Metrics

Use the DORA Metrics Insight to examine your organization's DORA (DevOps Research Assessment) metrics.

If you want to create a DORA Metrics Insight refer to the below resoures.

Tutorial: Create a DORA Metrics Insight
DORA Metrics Reports

Dev Insights

Dev Insights examines development efforts, particularly in relation to SCM metrics, such as PR creation, merging, and review collaboration.

For more information about SCM metrics and reports, go to velocity metrics and SCM reports.

If you want to create a Developer i.e. SCM Metrics Insight refer to the below resources.

Business Alignment

The Business Alignment Insight can help visualize where your teams expend the most effort and help your teams prioritize their time. This Insight includes the following three widgets, which provide an overview of the categories or projects where engineers are allocating the most time:

Effort Investment Single Stat
Effort Investment Trend Report
Effort Investment By Engineer

For more information about these reports and metrics, go to Effort Investment Metrics.

If you want to create additional Business Alignment Insights, select the Effort Investment Profile option under Parameters when creating Insights.