User Profile

The user profile, which lives in the My Profile section of the portal, displays current customer-wide and user-specific settings. The profile is covered in the following topics:

Note: If you would like assistance with any aspect of registering a user, please email us at support@kentik.com.

 

About the Profile

The user profile (a.k.a. “My Profile”) is organized as a collection of pages that each represent different categories of information, some of which is editable, related to the user and the organization (see topics below). To access the profile, click your user name at the right of the main Kentik navbar, then choose My Profile from the drop-down menu.

The profile consists of two main UI elements:

  • Sidebar: A list, at the left of the window, of pages in the profile.
  • Profile pages: The individual pages with user information and settings.
 

User Information

This page displays basic information specific to the individual user (editable where indicated):

  • Level (read-only field): Administrator or Member (see About Users).
  • Full name (editable field): The user’s full name as specified when the user was added or last edited.
  • Email (editable field): The email address specified when the user was added or last edited.
  • Update User Information (button): Saves any changes made to user information.
 

User Settings

The User Settings page is covered in the following topics:

 
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User Settings Page

The user settings page contains panes for the following settings:

  • Notifications: Settings related to communications from Kentik (see Notifications).
  • Default Settings: Settings related to the defaults that are used to customize the portal for an individual user (see Default Settings).
 
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Notifications

The following user profile settings relate to notifications, both those that appear in the portal and those that can be emailed to the user:

  • Service updates (toggle switch): Determines whether notifications about service status (e.g. scheduled maintenance, outage, etc.) will be:
    - Emailed to the user.
    - Displayed in the portal during an active session (even with switch off, notifications will be displayed at login).
  • Product updates (toggle switch): Determines whether notifications about the product (e.g. updates to features, interface, capabilities, etc.) will be:
    - Emailed to the user.
    - Displayed in the portal during an active session (even with switch off, notifications will be displayed at login).
  • BGP session events (toggle switch): Determines whether the user will receive emails when there is a non service-affecting interruption (flap) in BGP.
 
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Default Settings

The following user profile settings enable customization of the user experience in the portal:

  • Historical overlay (toggle switch): Determines whether the Historical Overlay display setting in Data Explorer is enabled by default.
  • rDNS lookup (toggle switch): Determines whether reverse DNS (rDNS) lookups are performed when querying IPs. Disabling this option will speed up IP queries.
  • Time zone (toggle switch): The time zone in which times are expressed, either UTC or local.
  • Landing page (radio buttons): Determines which page the Kentik Detect portal will go to after login:
    - Data Explorer (default): Data Explorer with default sidebar settings.
    - Alerting: The Active Alerts page.
    - Dashboard: A dashboard chosen from the resulting drop-down list.
    - Saved view: A saved view chosen from the resulting drop-down list.
  • Update Landing Page (button): Updates the landing page setting to the currently selected radio button.

When Landing Page is set to Dashboard or Saved View, a button (Select Dashboard or Select View) will appear at the right of the card. To choose a specific page, click the button to open a dialog that lets you select from available dashboards or saved views. The list can be sorted by clicking on its headings. It can also be filtered with the filter field or by using the following buttons across the top:

 

User Authentication

User authentication is covered in the following topics:

 
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Authentication Page

The Authentication page contains the following user profile settings that support user authentication for Kentik APIs.

  • Initiate Password Reset (button): Click to send password reset instructions to the email address associated with this user.
  • Disable 2FA (shown only if 2FA is enabled): Remove all of your two-factor authentication methods.
  • Add YubiKey (button): For additional security, Kentik enables authentication via YubiKey, a hardware authentication device manufactured by Yubico that supports one-time passwords, public key encryption and authentication, and the Universal 2nd Factor protocol developed by the FIDO Alliance. Click this button to open the YubiKey registration pane (see Register YubiKey).
  • Add TOTP (button): For additional security, Kentik offers time-based one-time password (TOTP) authentication. Click this button to open the TOTP registration pane (see Register TOTP).
  • API Token (read-only field): A Kentik-generated string that is used to authenticate the user in an HTTP header (X-CH-Auth-API-Token).
  • Two-factor Authentication list: A list of all of your currently set up 2FA methods (authenticators and YubiKeys).
  • Reset API Token (button): Generates a new token, which will be written to the API Token field.

Notes:
- When logging into Kentik Detect, any valid 2FA method that is currently configured in the Two-factor Authentication list will be accepted in the One-time Token field (see Two-factor Login).
- If a security note is displayed just under the API token field then on the Access Control page (Admin » Access Control) the access setting for the API subsystem is set to allow only specified APIs.

 
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Register YubiKey

To register your YubiKey for login authentication in Kentik Detect:

  1. In the Authentication tile of your profile page, click the Enable YubiKey button. The Register YubiKey dialog will open.
  2. With your YubiKey inserted into your machine, touch the key. The YubiKey will write a one-time password (OTP) into the Enter Yubi OTP field.
  3. Click the Finish Registration button. A “registration successful” alert will appear briefly in Kentik Detect, after which the dialog will close and the new authentication method will appear in the Two-factor Authentication list. When you next log in you’ll be able to use YubiKey for two-factor authentication (see Two-factor Login).
 
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Register TOTP

The following steps explain how to register TOTP with the Google Authenticator app installed on your mobile device (steps may vary when using a different app):

  1. Download the Google Authenticator app to your device.
    Note: Always use a different device (e.g. a mobile phone) than the device from which you will access Kentik Detect.
  2. In the Authentication tile of your profile page, click the Enable TOTP button. The Register TOTP dialog will open.
  3. In Google Authenticator, press the Add button (plus sign). A popup menu will appear.
  4. Choose Scan a barcode. The camera application on your phone will open.
  5. Point the phone toward the bar code in the Register TOTP dialog on your computer screen. Authenticator will display “secret saved” when the code is recognized, and a new item will appear in authenticator’s list of authentication codes.
  6. Enter the new authentication code from your phone into the Token Validation field in the Register TOTP dialog, then click the Finish Registration button. A “registration successful” alert will appear briefly in Kentik Detect, after which the dialog will close and the new authentication method will appear in the Two-factor Authentication list. When you next log in you’ll be able to use TOTP for two-factor authentication (see Two-factor Login).
 

User Visualization Settings

User-specific customization settings for visualizations are covered in the following topics:

User visualization settings, accessed via the Visualizations tab in My Profile, enable you to control the appearance of visualizations that are rendered in Data Explorer and the portal Library (dashboards, saved views, etc.). The tab is structured with a control area on the left and a preview area on the right.

 
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Theme, Labels, and Overlays

The following controls appear at the top of the control area:

  • Theme: Toggle between the Standard Theme with a light background or the Dark Theme. The settings you make in each theme are independent of the other theme.
  • Labels: To choose a custom color for the labels applied to the key of a chart, do one of the following:
    - Click the color swatch at left and choose from the popup color palette.
    - Enter a hex number in the field at right.
  • Overlays: Choose a custom color for the Total and Historical overlays that are used on time-series visualizations. The color controls for Overlays are the same as for Labels.
 
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Color Palettes

The controls in the lower part of the control area enable you to choose a color palette for two categories of Chart View Types:

  • Quantitative: Choose a color palette for chart types that display quantitative data:
    - Stacked Area Chart
    - 100% Stacked Area Chart
    - Stacked Column Chart
    - Bar Chart
  • Qualitative: Choose a color palette for chart types that show qualitative data:
    - Line Chart
    - Pie Chart
    - Sunburst.

Note: The color palette settings will have no effect for the Sankey or Horizon chart types.

For both quantitative and qualitative chart types, you can choose a preset palette by clicking on it in the palette list or you can build your own palette. To build you own:

  1. Toggle the Use Custom Values switch to on. The preset palettes will be replaced with a set of individual color controls like those used for labels and overlays.
  2. Use the controls to change any of the individual colors that you’d like to change.
  3. If you decide that you’d like to go back to a preset color palette, toggle the Use Custom Values switch to off.
 
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Master Controls

Two controls apply to all settings on the Visualizations tab:

  • Reset Theme to Defaults: Restores all settings of the current theme (standard or dark) to default values.
  • Save Themes: Saves all changes made to the current settings of both themes.
 
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Preview Charts

The preview area at the right of the Visualizations tab contains two charts like those in the Data Explorer chart display area (see Explorer Chart Display). The top chart previews the current color choices for quantitative view types; the bottom chart previews the choices for qualitative views. To see the colors applied to a specific view type, use the drop-down View Type menu at the upper right of the preview chart.

 

User KDE Information

This page, visible only to organizations that have psql access to KDE, contains information enabling users from your organization to access KDE data directly from a psql client rather than going through the Kentik Detect portal (KDE Access via PostgreSQL).

Note: KDE access via psql is now deprecated. Use Kentik’s REST APIs instead (see APIs Overview). For additional information, contact Kentik support.

The following psql-related settings are available:

  • KDE host:port: A Kentik-assigned host:port through which the user can access the KDE datastore.
  • KDE user: A Kentik-assigned unique identifier for the customer to which the user belongs.
  • KDE password: A Kentik-assigned password with which the user can access the KDE datastore.
  • PSQL command line: The commands with which the user can access the Kentik Data Engine (KDE) datastore in psql (command line PostgreSQL client).
    Note: The -W parameter should be passed in with no value, and the value shown for the parameter should be entered in response to the prompt that will result from the initial command.
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