Create a pie chart in Kibana to compare zone activity

Our step-by-step guide to create a pie chart visualisation in Kibana.

Create Pie Chart Kibana Guide

The TL;DR (Too Long; Didn't Read)

Learn how we at reelyActive use Kibana pie charts to compare the relative activity of rooms/zones and their occupants.

What will this accomplish?
A visualisation that shows a percentage of the total activity detected per zone during a specific period.
Is there an easier way?
Manual occupancy counts using pen and paper?
So why would I read this?
To learn both how and why to automate relative room activity observation using a pie chart visualisation.

Prerequisites

reelyActive open source software with Elasticsearch and Kibana.

In order for there to be data to visualise, the reelyActive software must also have collected and written raddec data to Elasticsearch.

Creating a new pie chart visualization   Step 1 of 3

Create a pie chart in Kibana with the default settings.

What's a pie chart?
A pie chart is a circular statistical graphic, which is divided into slices to illustrate numerical proportion.
Why Kibana?
Kibana makes it easy to visualize data from an Elasticsearch database, where the source data is stored.

Open Kibana and then:

  1. Select the Visualize tab from the left menu bar
  2. Click the Create a Visualization button
  3. Select the Pie chart
Create a new Pie Chart in Kibana

The default settings will result in a pie chart with just one bucket being generated, similar to that below. The next step will be to define a meaningful set of metrics and buckets.

Default Pie Chart in Kibana

Defining Pie Chart Metrics   Step 2 of 3

Define a meaningful set of metrics and buckets to compare zone performance

What's a bucket?
A bucket is a computer science term for grouping data based on a criteria.
What are these criteria?
The metrics will be data sensed and the bucket will split slices to illustrate numerical proportion.

In the pie chart editor, configure the Metrics as indicated below:

Create a CSV file in Kibana
  1. Click to expand the Slice Size
  2. Select Unique Count from the Aggregation pull-down
  3. Select transmitterId.keyword from the Field pull-down
  4. Enter a label in the Custom Label field
  5. Click the right arrow on the top of the tool bar to update the changes

Then configure the Buckets as indicated below:

Create a CSV file in Kibana
  1. Click to expand the Split Slices buckets
  2. Select Filters aggregation from the pull-down
  3. Each filter will collect all documents that match its associated zone. Customize the filter by adding receiverId.keyword(s), a RSSI threshold, a Type filter etc
  4. Define a Label to specify the zone by clicking the icon.
  5. Click the right arrow on the top of the tool bar to update the changes

The pie chart should now include slices that provide a visualization of the occupancy percentage of each room.

Kibana pie chart buckets visualization

The basic pie chart visualization is complete. It looks friendly and smart, but without information it communicates anything meaningful. The next step explains how to customize the chart to get information and values.

Customising the pie chart settings   Step 4 of 4

Select pretty colours and more!

Why would I do this?
Good data may be the foundation for good decision making, but pretty data is what makes decision-makers notice and act!

The color of the pie chart can be changed by clicking directly on the color of each slice on the right side of the chart. Then, to get information follow the next steps.

Open Options tab and then:

  1. Check the Show Label box from the Label settingds
  2. Click the right arrow on the top of the tool bar to update the changes
Kibana pie chart buckets visualization

This visualization can be combined with other visualizations as part of a space occupancy dashboard, such as that below.

Kibana dashboard example

The underlying Elasticsearch query 


GET raddec/_search
{
  "size": 0,
  "aggs": {
    "2": {
      "terms": {
        "field": "receiverId.keyword",
        "size": 5,
        "order": {
          "1": "desc"
        }
      },
      "aggs": {
        "1": {
          "cardinality": {
            "field": "transmitterId.keyword"
          }
        }
      }
    }
  },
  "query": {
    "match_all": {}
  }
}
Elastic Search Award

Winner of a 2020 Elastic Search Award!

For our innovation of making physical spaces searchable like the web.

Our Award Our Integration

Where to next?

Create other visualizations, or continue exploring our open architecture and all its applications.