Portal Overview

This article provides a basic introduction to the Kentik v4 portal:

• Portal Structure
• Portal Page Layout
• Portal Data Views
• Portal View Sharing
• Portal Export Options
• Portal Search
• Portal Keyboard Shortcuts

Notes:
- For information on browser support and login procedures for the v4 portal, see Kentik Portals.
- For information about the v3 portal (deprecated) see v3 Portal.

The Kentik V4 portal is structured as a set of sections that are each made up of a series of modules, some of which are referred to as “workflows.” With the exception of the Settings section, the modules are each designed to help you efficiently access information related to a specific networking use case. The following sections are currently included:

• Featured: Direct links from the top left of the main menu to a set of the most popular areas of the portal, including Observation Deck, Kentik Map, Settings, Library, My Kentik Portal, and Licenses.
• Core: Modules relating to the day-to-day operation of your network in environments such as cloud, data center, WAN, and/or campus, including the physical and virtual devices that make up your network, and on which network traffic enters, traverses, and leaves your network. See Core Overview.
• Synthetics: Kentik's Synthetics workflows enable you to continuously monitor network performance so you can uncover and correct issues before they impact customer experience. This proactive testing is enabled by Kentik software agents (ksynth), including both public agents (available to all Kentik customers) and private agents (available only to your organization). The Ping and traceroute tests performed with these agents generate key metrics (latency, jitter, and loss) that are evaluated for network health and performance. See Synthetics Overview.
• Edge: Modules that enable Ops/Engineering to understand both network utilization and costs related to traffic coming from or going to external networks. See Edge Overview.
• Protect: Modules for security use cases, enabling you to defend your network, including detecting anomalies and responding against DDoS and other threats. See Protect Overview.
• Service Provider: Modules that enable communications service providers (CSPs) to understand requirements and performance related to services they provide to customers and subscribers. See Service Provider Overview.
• Cloud: Modules that help you manage public and hybrid cloud networking by enabling you to see the structure of and traffic on cloud resources, to proactively evaluate and troubleshoot performance, and to anticipate and minimize costs.
• Settings: Modules that you set up to give Kentik a clear understanding of your network infrastructure, including what components are involved, how the network is used, and the areas in which information from Kentik can help you most. See Settings Overview.
• Licenses: Your source for information about your Kentik licenses (referred to as "plans" in earlier versions of Kentik), which each represent a level of service specified in an agreement between you and Kentik. Values are displayed for attributes such as maximum flows per second (FPS), BGP data, and data retention period. Licenses are configured by Kentik and are not editable by customers. See Licenses.
• My Kentik Portal: Kentik's My Kentik Portal supports tenancy, which is a mechanism by which your organization can provide a limited, self-branded version of the Kentik portal to your own external or internal customers (the “tenants”). Customers assign users to a given tenant, which enables those users to see a curated set of visualizations and metrics that are filtered to show only their own traffic. See My Kentik Portal.
• Integrations: Links to pages that enable you to set up Kentik to work with external systems (see Integrations Overview). Integrations are available across a wide variety of categories, including the following:
  - SSO Platforms
  - Operations
  - DDoS mitigation
  - Notification
  - Custom

The main elements of the V4 portal layout are basically similar across most (but not all) pages:

• NavBar: The black horizontal strip at top includes the following UI elements:
  - Menu button (hamburger icon): Click to open the main menu, which allows you to navigate to all of the main modules/workflows of the portal (see Portal Structure).
  - Kentik logo: Click to return the landing page that you’ve designated as your default on the User-specific Defaults page of your User Profile.
  - Search: Click the magnifying glass icon to open the Search overlay, where you can enter text to search for it in the portal (see Portal Search).
  - Product Updates: A link that opens the Product Updates popup, which is a sidebar containing a list of the latest changes to the portal and other aspects of the Kentik product. A filter field at top filters the listed items to those matching the entered text.
  - Support: A link that opens the Contact Support dialog, where you can pass along bug reports, feature requests, and general suggestions or observations.
  - User menu: Provides access to your User Profile (user-specific preferences and settings) as well as to controls for theme (light or dark) and log out.
• SubNav: The silver horizontal strip below the NavBar includes the following UI elements:
  - Breadcrumbs: Indicates where you are in the portal and includes links that let you change level.
  - Page-specific menus: A set of menus found in the SubNav of many but not all portal modules. These menus provide access to actions that are specific to a given page, such as refreshing the page's data, sharing the page's content, creating a dashboard panel or saved view from the page, or adjusting query parameters that determine the results shown on the page.
• Main content: The main content area displays page components such as visualizations, tables, controls, and sidebars. These components vary widely depending on the current page.

One of the major goals of the V4 portal is to surface valuable information about your network right out of the box, without requiring you to configure pages to present information that's relevant to your operation. With that in mind, we include a variety of ready-made view types and ways to access them:

• Observation Deck: A user-configurable high-level view of your organization's network that features visualizations (a.k.a. "widgets") that each focus on a specific aspect of your traffic volume, performance, costs, connectivity, or utilization. See Observation Deck.
• Kentik Map: A visualization of your network infrastructure, both on-prem and cloud, that enables fast understanding of how components are interconnected and how that affects traffic patterns, network health, and performance, including application delivery and customer experience (see Kentik Map).
• Library: A collection of both Kentik-provided and custom instances of the following types of views (see Library):
  - Dashboard: A page with one or more panels that each display a single representation (graph, table, gauge, map) of query results.
  - Saved View: A page with one Data Explorer view that has been saved for later reuse.
• Network Explorer: A multi-level view of the current traffic on your network:
  - Network Explorer landing page: A high-level overview that includes breakdowns by direction, by individual sites and clouds, and by dimensions (such as applications, devices, etc.). See Network Explorer.
  - Network Explorer aggregate views: A complete picture of an entire class of traffic that is defined by a specific parameter (e.g. data source, dimension, or cloud provider). See Core Aggregate Views.
  - Network Explorer detail views: A detailed picture of one individual instance of a class of traffic (e.g. a data source, a dimension, or a cloud provider). See Core Detail Views.
• Synthetics: A synthetic testing section enabling you to easily set up, manage, and view data from ping and traceroute testing, involving both your own infrastructure and the cloud, guided and augmented by your actual network traffic data (see Synthetics Overview):
  - Synthetics Dashboard: The Synthetics Dashboard provides a summary overview of the health status of your tests, as well as information on the agents deployed and the consumption of test credits.
  - Test Control Center: The Test Control Center is used to manage your organization's synthetic tests and to drill down into the details of subtest results.
  - Agent Management: The Agent Management page lets you see all currently deployed agents, global and private, and manage your organization’s agents.
• Cloud: A collection of pages providing a high-level overview of various aspects of your cloud traffic and infrastructure (see Cloud Overview).
• Landing pages: Many of the individual modules/workflows in the Edge, Protect, and Service Provider sections of the portal are designed such that when you go to the landing page you see key information, similar to what you would see on a dashboard, and you can configure the view to customize what information is displayed and how it is arranged. For further information see the KB articles on individual modules, including the following:
  - Insights & Alerting
  - Capacity Planning
  - Discover Peers
  - Connectivity Costs
  - Traffic Engineering
  - DDoS Defense
  - OTT Service Tracking
  - CDN Analytics

The v4 portal’s options for sharing views with others are covered in the following topics:

• About View Sharing
• Sharing by Link
• Sharing by Email
• Sharing by Subscription
• Sharable Views

Kentik supports a number of different ways to share with others what you’re currently seeing in the portal. Some of these methods require the recipient to be a registered Kentik user who’s within your organization, while others enable you to share with persons outside of your organization who may not be Kentik users.

Note: While the Share menu is implemented on all portal pages, not all sharing options below are available on all pages.

The following methods of sharing the current view are accessed from the Share dialog, which you access via the Share menu in the SubNav (see Portal Page Layout):

• Link: Sharing options from the Link tab of the dialog (see Sharing by Link):
  - Internal share: Copy a URL of the view that you can pass along to other Kentik users within your organization
  - Public Share: Save the view to a publicly accessible web page that can be viewed by people who aren’t Kentik users, inside or outside of your organization.
• Email: Send the current view as a report that’s attached as a PDF or CSV file (see Sharing by Email).
• Subscription: Send the view on a scheduled, recurring basis as a PDF or CSV file attached to an email (see Sharing by Subscription)

In addition to Kentik’s built-in features for sharing via link, email, or subscription, you can also download the information from some portal modules and then share it yourself. Use the Actions menu in the SubNav (see Portal Page Layout) to download a file representing the view (see Portal Export Options), after which you can share that file with others using any communication method such as email or Slack.

The Share dialog enables two types of sharing by link, which are covered in the topics below.

An internal share is a URL that may be used by other Kentik-registered users in your own organization. To get the link:

1. In the SubNav, click the Share button to open the Share dialog.
2. in the Internal Share pane at the top of the Link tab, click the Copy Link button. The URL of the current view will be copied to the clipboard.
3. Paste the link into an email, Slack, or some other form of communication to share it with a colleague.

A public share is a publicly accessible web page that can be viewed by people who aren’t Kentik users, inside or outside of your organization (see About Public Shares). In the portal modules listed in Sharable Views, public shares are configured in the Public Share pane of the Link tab of the Share dialog.

The form in the Public Share pane is made up of the following UI elements:

• Manage Public Shares: A link that takes you to the portal’s settings page for Public Shares.
• Title: Enter a name for the public share.
• Description: Describe to the visitors with whom you'll be sharing the link why you are sharing this view with them and what they should look for, including relevant timestamps, incident details, etc.
• Share Link: A field showing the link for the page on which visitors will be able to see this public share. The last segment of the link will be auto-populated based on what you enter into the Title field, but you can modify this segment as desired (the segment will be validated for HTTP compliance).
• Recipients: A comma-separated list of addresses (within or outside of your organization) to which you'd like Kentik to send an email with a link to this public share.
• Message: The text of the email in which the link will be sent.

Notes:
- The above form also exists in the Link dialog that opens from the Edit button (pencil icon) in the Public Shares list (see Public Shares Admin Actions). The Link dialog version doesn’t include the Recipient or Message fields.
- Before creating a public share, be sure that the information in the shared visualization is appropriate for viewing by the public with no authentication.

Sharing by email means creating a report that Kentik will send as an attachment to a specified list of recipients. Email sharing is initiated from the Email tab of the Share dialog.

The Email tab of the Share dialog includes the following settings:

• Subject: The subject line for the email that will include the shared report.
• Share: The kind of view that you’d like to share (see Sharable Views).
• Selected view: A list of views of the kind specified with the Share setting. Choose the view from which you’d like to create a report to send via email.
  Note: This setting is present only when there is more than one available view of the kind selected with the Share setting.
• Report File Type: Depending on the kind of view specified with the Share setting, you may be able to choose the file type of the report.
• Recipients: A comma-separated list of addresses (internal or external) to which to email the report.
• Message: The body of the email.

To share by email:

1. In the SubNav, click the Share button to open the Share dialog.
2. In the Email tab, specify the settings covered in Email Tab UI.
3. Click the Share button to send the report as an attachment to the specified recipients.

Sharing by subscription is very similar to sharing by email but instead of being sent once the view is shared on an ongoing basis. A report is created from the view at a specified interval and sent to the same set of recipients each time. Subscription sharing is initiated from the Subscription tab of the Share dialog.

The Subscription tab of the Share dialog includes the following settings and controls:

• Manage Subscriptions: A link that takes you to the portal’s settings page for Subscriptions.
• Subscription: A drop-down in which you can do one of the following:
  - Click Create New to show a field into which you can enter the name of the new subscription. Click Cancel to hide the field.
  - Choose an existing subscription from a drop-down list, which enables you to add a recipient (yourself or someone else) to the distribution list or to modify the other properties of a report.
  Note: Modifying the content of a subscription will change it not only for you but for all recipients.
• Share: The kind of view that you’d like to share (see Sharable Views).
• Selected view: A list of views of the kind specified with the Share setting. Choose the view from which you’d like to create a report to send via email.
  Note: This setting is present only when there is more than one available view of the kind selected with the Share setting.
• Report File Type: Depending on the kind of view specified with the Share setting, you may be able to choose the file type of the report (PDF, CSV, etc.).
• Recipients: A comma-separated list of addresses (internal or external) to which to email the report.
• Schedule: The interval at which the report will be updated and sent: daily, weekly, monthly, or last day of month.
• On (day): Appears only if Schedule is set to Weekly or Monthly:
  - If Weekly, the day of the week to run the scheduled report;
  - If Monthly, the day of the month to run the scheduled report.
• Lookback: (present only for daily, weekly, and monthly): The date-span in days, back from the day the report is sent, to include in the report. The default depends on the setting of Schedule:
  - if Daily, default is 1;
  - if Weekly, default is 7;
  - if Monthly, default is 30.
  Note: This setting is shown only when Share is set to Dashboard or Saved View.

To share by subscription:

1. In the SubNav, click the Share button to open the Share dialog.
2. In the Subscription tab, specify the settings covered in Subscription Tab UI.
3. Click the Share button to send the report as an attachment to the specified recipients on a recurring basis at the specified interval.

The views that are currently sharable by one or more sharing method are listed in the table below.

Many views in the various modules of the Kentik portal can be downloaded for viewing outside the portal or for sharing with others. Downloads are implemented as export options from the Actions menu in the SubNav (see Portal Page Layout). Export options vary depending on the module.

The following export types are supported:

• Visual Reports:
  - Chart + Data Table: A single PDF containing both the visualization and the results table (which functions as the chart’s legend).
  - Chart image: The visualization only, exported as a PNG.
  - Chart vector: The visualization only, exported as an SVG.
• Data:
  - Chart Data: Export, as CSV, the data represented in the chart.
  - Data Table: Export, as CSV, the data in the table.

The portal’s search functionality is implemented as an overlay that you open from the magnifying glass icon in the main navbar. In its initial state, the overlay includes the following elements:

• Close: Click the X in the upper right corner to close the overlay.
• Search: A field in which you enter the text on which to search.
• Try searching for: A list of categories of network entities that gives the properties on which you can search. The properties vary depending on the category.

As you enter text in the Search field, the search engine starts looking for matches in the listed categories, and the Try searching for list is replaced with a list of results. The list is structured as a table with each result — along with details that vary depending on the category — on the left and the result’s category on the right. The Show field above the results list includes a blue button for each category in which there is a result; click on a button to toggle off/on the display of results for that category.

Also above the results list, at the right, is an orange See KB Results button that will open the KB in a new tab and show, in the Search Results page for the v4 KB, the results returned from searching the v4 KB for the string entered in the portal’s Search field. Each result is a link to one topic in the KB where the string was found. Use the tabs to switch to the results for the Platform KB or the v3 KB.

The Kentik v4 portal includes keyboard shortcuts (global hotkeys) for the commands in the table below.