Welcome to the quick overview of Kibana Lens,
the easy and intuitive way to visualize your
data in Elastic.
Millions of people already use Kibana to visualize
and interact with their data in Elasticsearch.
With Kibana Lens we’re making it possible
for those existing users to move faster than
ever when doing ad hoc exploration
and dashboard creation.
With our focus on ease of use, Lens is also
the perfect experience for brand new users
of Kibana looking to rapidly jump into analysis
and visualization without prior Kibana knowledge.
Kibana Lens puts your Elasticsearch data right
at your fingertips by displaying your field
names in an easy to navigate list.
Lens also takes the guessing out what kind
of data might be in a given field by providing
a one-click path to exposing cardinality thus
giving users who may not be as familiar with
a specific data source an easy way to see
exactly what they’re working with.
Once you understand what data you want to
visualize, Lens lets you simply drag-and-drop
a field onto the central viewing area where
it is immediately transformed into a chart.
Lens is built to evaluate the data you’ve
chosen and not only pick a visualization type
that lends itself well to your selected field,
but also choose additional data fields that
likely help your analysis.
In this example you can see that when I dragged
bytes into the central area, Lens created
a bar chart and also automatically added the
timestamp field which let me see a historical
trend of this data.
Kibana Lens is designed to immediately help
you start exploring your Elasticsearch data
without forcing you to preemptively choose
a visualization type.
With one mouse movement I was able to immediately
go from raw data to an insightful visualization.
However, Lens will continue to update this
analysis even if additional fields are dragged
into the chart.
Here I’ve added the Extension.Keyword field
and Lens used it to segment my existing barchart
creating a stacked barchart.
We call this ability for Lens to support users
with context specific visuals - smart suggestions.
We know that visualizing data effectively
is important and this capability within Lens
is designed to incorporate both data visualization
best practices, as well as common analysis
patterns we know Kibana users are successful with.
You can see smart suggestions working in real time
by looking at the bottom of the screen.
With every drag and click, Lens provides new
chart alternatives - specific to the data
you’re interested in exploring.
For experienced Kibana users this shortens
the time it takes to create the right analysis
and for new Kibana users this acts as a safe
and powerful way to learn not just about the
data sets they are using, but also how to
responsibly analyze them.
While Lens works hard to assist you with your
data discovery, it also gives you complete
control over how your data visualization can look.
Selecting specific charts types from the visualization
selector, changing the aggregation of a field,
or even the specifics of how another field
is used to breakdown or segment your visual
analysis are all settings you have direct
access to in Lens.
Best of all, changing your mind half-way through
an ad hoc exercise about how you want to see
your data doesn’t mean having to start all over again.
Lens is designed to support the twists and
turns of real world data analysis operations.
Once you’ve completed a data discovery exercise
in Lens and created a visual you’re happy
with, quickly adding it to an existing or
totally new dashboard follows the same easy
couple of clicks as any other
standard Kibana visualization.
Lens not only makes discovering data insights
inside of Elastic easy for everyone, it also
supports the existing methods already within
Kibana for sharing those insights broadly
- from co-workers to customers.
Kibana Lens is available in Beta now.
To get started, spin up a cluster on
Elasticsearch Service, or install the latest version of
the Elastic Stack.
Already have Kibana running?
Just upgrade your clusters to 7.5
and give Lens a try.