The Object Relationship (Advanced) widget displays a graph or tree view that depicts the parent-child relationship of the selected object. It provides advanced configuration options. You can create a graph or tree view in VMware Aria Operations for the selected objects that you add to your custom dashboards.

How the Object Relationship (Advanced) Widget and Configuration Options Work

You can add the Object Relationship (Advanced) widget to one or more custom dashboards and configure it to display data that is important to different dashboard users. The data that appears in the widget is based on the configured options for each widget instance.

You edit an Object Relationship (Advanced) widget after you add it to a dashboard. The changes you make to the options help create a custom widget to meet the needs of the dashboard users.

You can double-click any object in the graph or tree view and see the specific parent-child objects for the focus object. When you double-click the object again, you see the original graph or tree view. If you point your cursor over an object icon, you see the health, risk, and efficiency details. You can also click the Alerts link for the number of generated alerts. Click the purple icon to view the child relationships of the object.

Where You Find the Object Relationship (Advanced) Widget

The widget might be included on any of your custom dashboards. From the left menu, click Operations > Dashboards to see your configured dashboards.

To customize the data that appears in the dashboard widget, from the left menu, click Operations > Dashboards. To create your dashboard, from the left menu, click Operations > Dashboards. From the Dashboards panel, click Create. To edit your dashboard, from the left menu, click Operations > Dashboards. From the Dashboards panel, select the dashboard you want to edit and select Actions > Edit. Toggle between the Views and Widgets option to view and add a widget or view to the dashboard. The widgets list panel displays a list of all the predefined widgets. Drag a widget to the dashboard workspace in the upper panel.

Object Relationship (Advanced) Widget Toolbar Options

On the title bar of the widget, click the Show Toolbar icon to access the toolbar options.

Options Description
Dashboard Navigation You can navigate to another dashboard when the object under consideration is also available in the dashboard to which you navigate. To navigate to another dashboard, configure the relevant option when you create or edit the dashboard.
Reset to Initial Object If you change the hierarchy of the initial configuration or the widget interactions, click this icon to return to the initial resource. Clicking this icon also resets the initial display size.
Display Filtering Criteria

Shows the filtering settings for the widget in a pop-up window.

View Tree/View graph Displays a tree or graph view of the relationships.
Vertical/Horizontal Displays a vertical or horizontal view of the graph or tree view.
Hide Text/Show Text Hides or displays the object names.
Standard View/Fit View

The Standard View option fixes the view to a specific zoom level

The Fit View option adjusts the graph or tree view to fit the screen.
Group Items/Ungroup Items Groups by objects types. You can view further details by double-clicking on the object. You can also choose to display the graph or tree view without grouping the object types.
Path Exploration Displays the relative relationship path between two selected objects on the graph or tree view. To highlight the path, click the Path Exploration icon and then select the two objects from the graph or tree view.
Layers
  • Parent/Child: Displays a graph or tree view of the parent and child relationship for the specific object selected.
  • Custom: Indicates the relationship between the objects that are part of the custom relationship. These objects have a connection via the selected custom relationship.
Quick Filter Enter the name of an object that you want to see in the graph or tree view.

Object Relationship (Advanced) Widget Configuration Options

On the title bar of the widget, click the Edit Widget icon to configure the widget.

The configuration options are grouped into one or more sections. You can select the objects on which you want to base the widget data and refine the objects in the following sections. Each section filters the objects further and pushes the filtered objects to the next section. The widget data is based on the objects that are the output of the last section.

The Configuration section provides general configuration options for the widget.

The Input Data section provides options to specify input for the widget. This section appears when the widget is in self provider mode.

The Output Filter section provides options to restrict the widget data based on the selected filter criteria.

Option Description
Name

Enter a custom title that identifies this widget from other instances that are based on the same widget template.

Configuration
Refresh Content

Activate or deactivate the automatic refreshing of the data in this widget.

If not activated, the widget is updated only when the dashboard is opened or when you click the Refresh button on the widget in the dashboard.

Refresh Interval

If you activate the Refresh Content option, specify how often to refresh the data in this widget.

Self Provider
Indicates whether the objects for which data appears in the widget are defined in the widget or provided by another widget.
  • On. You define the objects for which data appears in the widget.
  • Off. You configure other widgets to provide the objects to the widget using the dashboard widget interactions options.
Parents Depth Select the depth of parent objects to be displayed.
Children Depth Select the depth of child objects to be displayed.
Inventory trees Select an existing predefined traversal spec for the initial object relationship graph or tree view.
Input Data
Object

Search for objects in your environment and select the object on which you are basing the widget data. You can also click the Add Object icon and select an object from the object list. You can use the Filter text box to refine the object list and the Tag Filter pane to select an object based on tag values.

Output Filter

Basic

Pick tags to refine the widget data. The widget data is based on the objects that have the picked tags applied. If you pick more than one value for the same tag, the widget includes objects that have any of the tags applied. If you pick more than one value for different tags, the widget includes only the objects that have all the tags applied.

Advanced

Refine the widget data further based on the filter criteria for object types. The widget data is based on the objects for the filtered object types.

If the objects have a tag filter applied in the Basic subsection, you define filter criteria for the object types of the objects with tag filter applied. If the objects with tag filter applied do not belong to any of the object types in this filter criteria, the widget skips this filter and includes all the objects with tag filter applied.

  1. In the first drop-down menu, select an object type.
  2. In the second drop-down menu, select the option based on which you want to define the filter criteria. For example, if you select Metrics for the Datacenter object type, you can define a filter criteria based on the value of a specific metric for data centers.
  3. In the drop-down menus and text boxes that appear, select or enter values to filter the objects.
  4. To add more filter criteria, click Add.
  5. To add another filter criteria set, click Add another criteria set.