Latest Dynatrace - Early Feedback

[ct_27]

Dear Community, I'm interested in your feedback as well.  The moment latest Dynatrace was released to our tenant I got calls of uncertain excitement from my users.  I told them it was safe to turn it on and it's simple to toggle back and forth incase things don't work out.  This is an early release so look around, let me know how it goes, but improvements are coming.

I received some positive comments regarding the new look and feel. A complaint of the way legacy pages were not converted yet, making for a SolarWinds APM like inconsistent UI feel.

Within 60 minutes though I started getting emails and Teams messages complaining of how difficult it was to access their metrics with the new dashboards and notebooks.  "It looks pretty, but I spent 2 hours unsuccessfully trying to recreate charts I already have in my classic dashboards", "It's too difficult to find metrics in the new structure", "There are not enough examples to guide us", "There should be an in place linter to help fix queries", "Where is the Data Explorer for Grails?", "I am finding it difficult to access my metrics with this code. Where is the visual graph building like Data Explorer".

I've instructed them that it's nice that we are able to experience latest Dynatrace so early, we'll send the feedback to Dynatrace, and lets hope improvements arrive soon.

I would though like to hear how other Community Members are doing. Maybe those Early Adopters could tell us they had similar initial reactions but it got better.

[MikeDouglas]

One of the first problems I noticed was with basic functionality. There is no way that I can find with the new interface to switch between environments. 

Links to the community from the new interface result in an error. 

[ct_27]

It took me a bit to find it but its hidden behind the profile icon on the bottom left of the page. 

 its that "latest dynatrace" toggle.

[MikeDouglas]

Sorry I should have been more clear. I did find how to turn off the latest Dynatrace interface. In the new interface there is no way to switch between multiple Dynatrace tenants. Either need to bookmark the urls or switch to the old interface to find all of our tenants. 

[roman_windischh · Accepted solution]

Hi Mike! The "environment switcher" is planned to be available in the third calendar quarter. Our current concept includes indicating the current environment in the user menu, filtering for all environments users have access to, favoriting of environments to have them show up on top and allowing to switch environments quickly through the search (e.g. CMD/CTRL+K > search for environment > ENTER to open environment)

[MikeDouglas]

Thanks -- this makes sense and I'm glad that it is planned, but it does seem like this is a blocker for some of my organization to easily use the new interface and switch between environments. Will Dynatrace hold off on making this the default interface until this change is made?

[Yosi_Neuman]

Did not find a way to switch between environments 

[Yosi_Neuman]

Amm, yep not straightforward to get use to this latest Dynatrace look and feel 🤔

But just look on this as a menu change from the old vertical menu to a new spread on all over the page menu 

You still able to get to all the "old" entries from the Dynatrace upper left entry  

HTH

Yos 

[roman_windischh]

Hi Yos! The general look and feel certainly changes. While that is by design, we're aware that it will take a while to get used to. Just a couple of tips:

• The main landing page (accessible through the "Dynatrace" entry) is not actually a menu, but an early version of a fully customizable home screen. Think of it like the desktop on Windows / OSX. It just happens to look like a menu at the moment, because we pre-populated it for everyone accustom to the previously overcrowded left-hand product menu.
• The new left-hand menu is the place where the latest Dynatrace already allows for quite some customization. It allows to pin / order your most important apps and will also show all other recently used ones for you to quickly get back to. We pre-populated it with the list of "favorites" from the previous left-hand menu.

PS: Please keep us posted about your early impressions! We'll help to sort out any issues you might face.

[Yosi_Neuman]

Hi @roman_windischh 

Since we deal with few SaaS environments, the name of the environment at the top search old UI  is missing in the new UI

Without this search currently we don't know to which environment we are logged to  🤔

Old UI:

Thanks

Yos

[fstekelenburg]

I seem to have to missed the boat on this one, and I can nowhere find an introduction to it (only for the now classic? release). Where can I find the announcement of the new dashboarding and the changes/advantages it entails? Pointer to a release note perhaps?
I see the documentation is already updated.

Update: OK, so actually interpreting the (Saas) release notes of 1.265, where it is introduced as 'the new Dynatrace'. Dynatrace SaaS release notes version 1.265 | Dynatrace Docs

[Julius_Loman]

It might take a while until you get your environment(s) converted. 

[Julius_Loman]

Being a "power user" I really find the DQL and "all things grail" extremely powerful, but I have two doubts about adoption:

• I don't think regular users will be able to use DQL for accessing data without any in-product guidance (wizard helping you build your query) or intensive training. Mainly just for creating a simple dashboard from metrics or logs. 
• FinOps - since you are charged for every DQL query, I find it impossible to plan the licenses even for a short term. Having the license costs under control will be significantly more challenging than before. 

[AntonioSousa]

The FinOps / DQL licensing is a great challenge. I see so many risks, that driving adoption will not be an easy task...

[mark_eshelby]

A comment on the wizard/guided approach as it relates to the cost comments.

• Usage and cost of Grail-related capabilities are shown in the Account Management portal with a drill-down to a prepopulated notebook to provide insights into query usage and the user/app running them. 

($/usage values are for demo purposes only)

• We are also working on features to detect and notify you when higher-than-expected usage is detected on a capability. While this may not directly address the planning aspect of your post, it can help keep costs under control.

[Julius_Loman]

Good to know this is at least already addressed at least to some degree. With broader usage more FinOps problems start to appear. 

@mark_eshelby with Log management / Business events it's clear how the billing works - what about upcoming Metrics on Grail / Traces on Grail?