Debugging Insights Dashboard Issues

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Why is it not possible to create or manipulate my Insights dashboard?


Issue Description: Dashboard issues may vary from creation to modification, filtering, sharing, etc., and hence need to be tackled as per the nature of the issue.

The most common issues noticed around dashboards in Insights are:

  • Inability to create dashboards
  • Errors during the creation of dashboards
  • Challenges saving, exporting, and sharing dashboards
  • Data discrepancies and anomalies in the dashboards
  • Challenges seeing expected filtered data in the dashboards



Troubleshooting:
This article mostly covers the different data points that the UiPath Support teams needs to be able to assist with an issue.

A. Dashboard Creation:

  1. In the event that a user is unable create a dashboard:
    1. Validate if an option is available to create dashboards and ensure the required permissions are present as per: Insights User Roles. Make sure to capture screenshots.
      1. If the required permissions cannot be granted, it is most likely related Access issues: How to Debug Insights Login or Access Issues?
      2. Collect the logs in the above article and raise a support ticket.
    2. Confirm the following steps have been followed: Creating New Dashboards in Insights
    3. If there is option to create a dashboard, and the correct steps have been followed, then do the following:
      1. Make a note of any error messages encountered when trying to create a dashboard (screenshots are best).
      2. Capture a HAR trace: How to generate a har file. This should start from when the user attempts to login, up to when the failure occurs. Make sure to note timestamps.
      3. For Automation Suite and MSI versions collect the logs of the application:
  2. For "How-to" queries around dashboard creation (such as how to create a certain visual, or how to create a measure, etc.):
    1. Try and provide a clear description of what is trying to be done (For example, "I am trying to combine my ROI Processes and ROI queues into a single metric). It is helpful if the end goal is understood and how this report might be used.
    2. Provide screenshots if applicable. Also, if there are alternative ways if this information is being reported, provide those (For example if there is an Excel report where this type of report currently exists, provide that, or if there is some reference material being used).
    3. If the question is around formulas, provide the ones currently being used.
    4. Export of the dashboard if on 23.4+: See: Dashboard Export
    5. The gathered information can be shared with UiPath Product Support.

B. Data Discrepancy:

  1. In the event that there seems to be a discrepancy in the dashboards, know how this determination was made. For example, maybe the Robot writes information to an Excel sheet and that same information is reported to Insights but does not match. Questions to note:
    1. Where did this other source of data come from? (Usually this comes from Orchestrator, so take screenshots of what is seen in Orchestrator).
    2. How was this other data generated?
    3. Can this data be shared for comparison?
    4. Any evidence from files to screenshots are very helpful.
  2. To diagnose data discrepancies, information from the Insights dashboard is also required:
    1. Export of the dashboard if on 23.4+: See: Dashboard Export
    2. Screenshots of the following items when the discrepancy was noticed:
      1. Filters
      2. Formulas
      3. Dashboard as is displayed
    3. Are folder permissions enabled? See: Folder Permissions
    4. Is this cloud or on premise? If its on premise, was any DB maintenance recently done?
  3. If steps 1 and 2 do not help identify the problem, raise a ticket with UiPath and make sure to include all the evidence that was gathered in those steps.
  4. Examples (These are based on real scenarios and meant to help clarify what is needed to solve data discrepancy issues.):
    1. If more queueItems are visible in Insights than that should be
      1. Determine this by looking at the number of queueItems in Orchestrator.
      2. As such, the following items are requested
        • Export of the queueItems from Orchestrator as a csv
        • Export of the queueItems from Insights as a csv
        • Perform a vlookup between the two sources of data. This would allow us to identify where there are discrepancies and why
        • In this scenario, not aware of the regular DB maintenance was being performed on their Orchestrator DB. There was no discrepancy
    2. If queueItems are missing from Insights
      1. Determine this by looking at manual reports they generated
      2. As such, request the following:
        • The data from the manual reports
        • Export of the queueItems from Insights as a CSV
        • In this case, request the queueItems from Orchestrator as a CSV
        • Comparing the data, it is analyzed that data between Orchestrator and Insights match. On investigating a bug is found in the Robot generated reporting logic.
    3. Another common source of a 'discrepancy' can be from a misunderstanding of the data. In these cases, Insights reports the correct data but the problem is in how the data is filtered, or in misunderstandings in the data ingestion process (for example, queueItems are not ingested when 'In Progress').

C. Other Miscellaneous Issues:

Data Filtering: Sometimes there are complaints about data population post the application of filters. In that case, some things to check would be:

  1. Check the behavior after using the "Clear cache and refresh" option
  2. At what level is the filter applied - Dashboard level or Widget/Tile/Explore level?
  3. Make note of the following key points:
    1. When a tile is edited, it will not apply the dashboard-wide filters, and therefore there will be different data when there is a edit vs. what is seen in the dashboard
    2. If same field is present at the dashboard level and the widget level, the dashboard will always override the widget filters
  4. Check if the desired tiles in the dashboard are actually set to update or not. This can be done by editing the dashboard, opening the filter settings, and navigating to the "Tiles to Update" tab
  5. Sometimes one might also configure filters to change when another filter is modified. This is done by the "Select filters to update when this filter changes" setting found under the "Settings" tab when a filter setting is edited as indicated in point 4. above. See if this could be causing the said issue
  6. If the user has a working instance of a dashboard that reflects the expected values, it might be a good idea to compare this against the non-working instance for the filter settings specifically.
  7. If engaged with UiPath Product Support, provide an export of the dashboard if on 23.4+: See: Dashboard Export. If on a prior version, provide screenshots.

Data Export: A few versions of Insights have been known to have issues with dashboard export. Firstly, check if the user has the Designer role since it is mandatory for exporting dashboards. If the issue persists, gather the following information:

  1. The error screenshot and error message
  2. The behavior when the export format is switched (Does it only happen with PDF, or all exports)
  3. The behavior of standard export vs. advanced export (Exporting dashboards)
  4. Looker backend query logs (Applicable only for On-Premise Insights). See: Insights Performance Issues

Data Explore: When inside the explore view of the dashboard, few different issues may be encountered. For example:

  1. If the issue is with a custom filter, check the length of the filter. If it has a lot of conditional clauses, try applying one clause at a time, ensure that the desired results are populating, and then proceed to apply the next filter. Continue the process until it is possible to isolate the part of the filter that could be causing the issue
  2. If a specific visualization is not working, switch to a different one in the 'Visualization' window within the explore and see if it works. Sometimes, a specific type of data is suited only to specific visualizations, and an alternate one might be incompatible
  3. For On-Premise Insights, adhere to the SQL prerequisites because that has been seen as one of the primary causes for errors seen within the explore.


Dashboard Manipulation: For all other challenges with dashboards, for instance, editing, sharing, deleting, downloading, etc., the following information should be collected to triage the issue:

  1. Version of the product being leveraged
  2. If this has worked fine in the past
  3. If there have been any recent changes in the environment
  4. The exact issue description including any relevant error messages/screenshots.
  5. Export of the dashboard if on 23.4+: See: Dashboard Export .