Landing page for new users

[alexfrancoeur]

As we continue to move forward with improving the getting started experience for new users, one idea that came up was a light generic landing page for new users. This is a quick win and will familiarize a new user with what's available in Kibana. For a new user this would be a one time, minimalistic screen with some the key highlights of Kibana and an interim solution until we have a more in depth workflow.

Audience and workflows

• New Kibana user with data / pre-defined index patterns: Load Kibana => Getting started screen
• New Kibana user with no data / pre-defined index patterns: Load Kibana => Add Data, Manage and Monitor screen => Getting started screen
• Existing Kibana user with data available: Load Kibana => Click help button => Getting started screen

Functionality

• This view will appear for new users with an opt out option - "Don't show me this again". Choosing to opt out should be user specific
• This view will be treated as its own application
• This view will always be accessible to a user
• This view should be easily extensible for community and internal plugins or dynamically built from what is available on the left hand navigation

Content

This content is not finalized

• Kibana
  • Text and description about what Kibana offers
  • Link to current getting started documentation
  • Link to demo environment - “Want to see what Kibana is capable of? Check out our demo environment”
• Discover
  • Visual representation of discover (standard icon, more detailed graphic, screenshot)
  • Description of discover: "Interactively explore your data with Discover. You can submit search queries, filter your search results and view document data."
  • Quick link or button to discover application: app/kibana#/discover
  • Link to current documentation: Discover
• Visualize
  • Visual representation of visualize (standard icon, more detailed graphic, screenshot)
  • Description of visualize: "Analyze and aggregate your data with Visualize. Slice and dice your data any way you'd like with the multitude of visualization types at your disposal."
  • Quick link or button to visualize application: app/kibana#/visualize
  • Link to current documentation: Visualize
• Dashboard
  • Visual representation of dashboard (standard icon, more detailed graphic, screenshot)
  • Description of dashboard: "Showcase and share your data with Dashboards. Collect all of your most important visualizations and place them in one convenient area."
  • Quick link or button to visualize application: app/kibana#/dashboards
  • Link to current documentation: Dashboard
• Timelion
  • Visual representation of timelion (standard icon, more detailed graphic, screenshot)
  • Description of timelion: "Programmatically analyze time series data with Timelion. Using a simple expression language, perform calculations to answer complex time series questions."
  • Quick link or button to visualize application: app/kibana#/timelion
  • Link to current documentation: Timelion
• Dev Tools
  • Visual representation of dev tools (standard icon, more detailed graphic, screenshot)
  • Description of dev tools: "Interact with the REST API of Elasticsearch in Dev Tools. With contextual suggestions and beautifully formatted responses, run Elasticsearch directly from Kibana."
  • Quick link or button to visualize application: app/kibana#/dev_tools
  • Link to current documentation: Dev Tools

cc: @snide @alt74 @cjcenizal @uboness @skearns64

[uboness]

I like the task oriented screen.

not a fan of the overlay/popup. IMO this should be a screen/app of its own:

• the user should land on when logging in
• the user can opt out of landing it every time by checking a box
• even when the user opt out of this one, this page should still be accessible (if we have a ? icon on the header, we can have to menu there with two items - "help" (will open a new tab with docs) and "Getting started" that will show this page/app.

[nick-george]

This would be a great feature for Kibana.

What if it were implemented using a dashboard? I know that the current dashboard mechanism probably does not support all the features (text boxes, clickable images etc) necessary to make a welcome screen. However, if these features where added to dashboards, you'd be killing two birds with one stone. Better, more interactive dashboards, plus a useful welcome screen!

[alexfrancoeur]

After a sync with the design team today, internal conversations and comments in this issue we have come to the following conclusions.

• This will be it's own screen and not an overlay
• There will be two separate views, one geared towards ingesting data and another aimed at what you can do within Kibana
• We will link out to documentation and demo environments where applicable
• The default view will be determined by whether or not data available (or an index pattern defined)
• You will be able to link back to this page easily
• This page will continue to be shown to a user until they opt out - "Do not show me this again"

Next steps are for @snide and @alt74 to put together an initial design.

[alexfrancoeur]

@nick-george I'm curious as to why would you like to see this implemented as a dashboard. Do you see any extra benefits to the experience from a getting started perspective? There have been some similar discussions around implementing a dashboard "homepage". By default, this would be an empty dashboard with empty panels that link to "add a visualization". One of my concerns with this approach is that it limits to the amount of help we can provide for the ingestion step initially.

[alexfrancoeur]

Updated description of this issue with additional detail. I'll be adding a separate issue for a more detailed screen to help with data collection and creating an index pattern.

[cjcenizal]

Partially addressed by #11805

[tbragin]

Since we reverted PR above closing this issue for now in favor of a more general "Onboarding" issue: #11824