vRealize Network Insight provides administrators with a wealth of information related to VMs, flows, segments, and more. As you gain experience using this powerful tool, you’ll inevitably begin to gravitate toward using the widgets and searches that are most relevant to your organization’s own unique needs. This is where pinboards come into play. Pinboards serve as a collection of widgets, making it easier for you to access and share the data that’s most important to you.
Creating a Pinboard
Creating a pinboard is easy. Just click on the pin icon associated with a widget that you want to include in the new pinboard. When you do, you’ll see a popup window asking you which pinboard you want to pin the widget to. Rather than choosing an existing pinboard, click on the Create New Pinboard option. Finally, enter a name and description for the new pinboard, and then click Create and Pin.
Pinboards exist in vRealize Network Insight as a tool for staying better organized. As such, there are several things that you can do to get the most benefit from pinboards. For example, if there’s a pinboard you use often, you can set it to be your homepage. To do so, just open the pinboard and then click on the More Options link located in the pinboard’s upper right corner. You’ll see a menu containing options to do things like editing or deleting the pinboard. Among these options is an option to set the pinboard as your homepage. Selecting this option causes the pinboard to become your homepage. If you later delete the pinboard, your homepage will revert to the vRealize Network Insight Home page.
As helpful as pinboards are for making it easy to locate relevant information, their most useful capability may be their ability to be used collaboratively. vRealize Network Insight allows you to share pinboards with your coworkers, which allows them to benefit from your pinboards.
Sharing Pinboards
Once you’ve created a pinboard, you can share it by clicking the Share icon at the top right of the pinboard. This causes vRealize Network Insight to open the Sharing and Collaboration window for the pinboard.
By default, everyone in vRealize Network Insight can view all the pinboards, as long as they have the link. That’s why the Sharing and Collaboration window shows the link to share the pinboard, as well as being able to share the pinboard with specific users or groups. When you share the pinboard explicitly, it will show in the navigation menu of those people.
This window displays all of the users who currently have access to the pinboard, as well as their access rights. You can share the pinboard with others by simply selecting the user’s name from the Invite New Users list. You can also choose the level of access that you wish to grant to that person.
View Only, View and Edit Privileges
There are two different privileges that can be granted when sharing a pinboard:
- View Only
- View and Edit
The View and Edit privilege behave a little bit differently depending on how it’s being applied. A pinboard owner automatically receives View and Edit privileges for their pinboard, and can view, edit, or delete the board. Similarly, an administrator who is granted View and Edit privileges is also able to view, edit, or delete the board. However, a member who is granted View and Edit privileges can view and edit the board but is not able to delete it.
It’s also worth noting that a user’s ability to share a pinboard depends on their own privileges. A user who has been granted View Only privileges is not allowed to share the pinboard with anyone else.
Conclusion
While a pinboard is commonly used as a tool for aggregating needed information, a pinboard can also be used as a reporting tool. Simply open the pinboard, click on the More Options link, and then select the Export to PDF option from the pinboard menu to create a report from the pinboard data. To learn more about how to use pinboards, visit the VMware documentation page.
