Amazon OpenSearch Service launches the next-generation OpenSearch UI

Amazon OpenSearch Service launches a modernized operational analytics experience that can provide comprehensive observability spanning multiple data sources, so that you can gain insights from OpenSearch and other integrated data sources in one place. The launch also introduces OpenSearch Workspaces that provides tailored experience for popular use cases and supports access control, so that you can create a private space for your use case and share it only to your collaborators. With the next-generation user interface (UI), the Discover experience has been improved to simplify interactive analysis, so that you can easily utilize features such as natural language query generation to gain insights from your data.

Multiple Data Source: You might have already used OpenSearch Dashboards to provide an operational analytics experience for your OpenSearch clusters. OpenSearch Dashboards is co-located with a cluster, so that each OpenSearch Dashboards can only work with one cluster. And as you scale up your workload across multiple clusters, there is not a unified experience to analyze your data in one place. In comparison, the next-generation OpenSearch UI is designed to work across multiple OpenSearch clusters to aggregate the comprehensive insights in one place. An OpenSearch application is an instance of the next-generation OpenSearch UI. Currently, OpenSearch applications can be associated with multiple OpenSearch clusters (above version 1.3), Amazon OpenSearch Service Serverless collections, and integrated data sources such as Amazon S3. Each OpenSearch cluster can be associated with multiple OpenSearch applications, in addition to its co-located OpenSearch Dashboards that will remain functional.

Workspace: With workspaces, you can easily create your use case specific contents in a private space and manage the permissions in team collaboration. Workspace provide curated experiences for popular use cases such as Observability, Security Analytics and Search, so that you can find it straightforward to build contents for your use case. Workspace supports collaborator management, so that you can share your workspace only to your intended collaborators, and manage the permissions for each collaborator.

Discover: The improved Discover feature now provides a unified log exploration experience that adds the support for SQL and Piped Processing Language (PPL), in addition to the existing support for DQL and Lucene. Discover features a new data selector to support multiple data sources, a new visual design, query autocomplete and natural language query generation for improved usability. With the enhanced Discover interface, you can now analyze data from multiple sources without switching tools, reducing complexity and improving efficiency.

Solution Overview

The following diagram illustrates architecture of the OpenSearch Dashboards.

The following diagram illustrates the next-generation OpenSearch UI architecture.

In the following sections, we discuss the following topics

The process of creating an application
Setting up and using the new Workspaces functionality
The enhanced Discover experience

We’ll demonstrate how these improvements streamline data analysis, foster collaboration, and empower you to extract insights more efficiently across various use cases.

Create an application:

To begin using the next-generation OpenSearch UI, you can first create an application. An application is an instance of the OpenSearch UI (Dashboards), and you have the flexibility to create multiple applications within a single account. To create a new application, complete the following steps:

On the Amazon OpenSearch Service console, choose OpenSearch UI (Dashboards)under Central management in the navigation panel.
Choose Create application.
For application name, enter a descriptive name for your new application.
AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM) is the default authentication mechanism. Optionally, you can select Authentication with IAM Identity Center (IDC), so that you can use credentials and access management from your existing identity providers to manage user access.
For OpenSearch application admins, specify the IAM principals or IDC users that will have permissions to update or delete the application configuration. You will automatically be set as the first admin.

This page lists all the existing applications under your account in the current AWS region. You can create new application from this page.

This page is the create application workflow. You can specify the application name, enable/disable IDC and define application admins to create an application.

After you configured these settings and created an application, your new OpenSearch application will be ready for you to associate data sources and start using the enhanced UI capabilities.

Associating data sources:

After you create your new OpenSearch application, the next step is to associate the relevant data sources. This allows you to connect the application to the necessary OpenSearch domains, collections, and other data sources.

On the application details page, choose Manage data sources.

You will be presented with a list of all the OpenSearch data sources you have access to, including managed domains and serverless collections.

Select the data sources you want to associate with this application.

OpenSearch domains below version v1.3 will not be compatible with the next-generation UI, and will be grayed out in the list. Additionally, if you need to connect to a domain within a virtual private cloud (VPC), you will need to authorize OpenSearch application as a new principal under its security configurations. If you need to connect to a collection within a VPC, you will need to configure its network policy to Private, enable AWS service private access with OpenSearch application.

Choose Save to finalize the data source association.

Your OpenSearch application is now ready to use, with access to the connected data.

Working with the OpenSearch application:

To access your new OpenSearch application, you can either choose the application URL or choose Launch application on the application details page. After you’ve successfully logged in either with IAM or IDC, you’ll be directed to the application’s homepage. From here, you can choose to create a new workspace or navigate to an existing one that you have access to.

Creating a new workspace:

A workspace is a tailored experience for your use case and team collaboration. There are five types of workspaces: Observability, Security Analytics, Search, Essentials, and Analytics. You can click on the info button to learn more about each workspace type. Existing workspaces will be listed on the homepage. To create a new workspace, complete the following steps:

Choose Create workspace.
Enter a name for your workspace.
Optionally, you can select a different color for the workspace icon for easier identification.
Select the type of workspace you want to create: Observability, Security Analytics, Search, Essentials, or Analytics
Add at least one data source for this workspace (from the list of data sources you previously associated with the application).

For this post, we create an Observability workspace named MyWorkspace and associate it with one Amazon OpenSearch Serverless collection and one Amazon OpenSearch Service managed cluster. You can always manage the data sources associated with a workspace, even after it has been created.

Invite Collaborators

After you create your new workspace, you can add users or groups as collaborators. Workspace collaborators are the users you want to invite to work with you in this workspace, and there are three available permission levels for collaborators: admin, read/write, and read-only. Read/write permission allows a collaborator to create, edit and delete the dashboards, visualizations, and saved queries within the workspace, whereas collaborators with read-only access can only view the results. Admin level gives a collaborator the same permissions as you to not only read/write but also update the configurations of the workspace or delete it.

To add collaborators to your workspace, complete the following steps:

Choose Collaborators in the navigation panel.
Choose Add collaborators.
Choose the type of users you want to add as collaborators. You can add collaborators by their IAM Amazon Resource Name (ARN) or IDC username.
Select a permission level for the collaborator from the three options: Read only, Read and write, and Admin

If you do not know the ARN of your intended collaborator, follow the instruction to check for their ARN, for example.

Improved navigation:

The improved navigation in workspaces provides a more contextual and purpose-built interface, ensuring that each workspace includes only the tools and features relevant to its use case. With enhanced clarity and better organization, the new navigation system is tailored to help you find the features you need quickly, improving overall productivity and minimizing time spent searching through menus.

Revamped Discover experience

Discover is now revamped to offer improved usability and efficiency. You can access multiple data sources, natural language query generation, a new data selector, and polished design with optimized data density, allowing you to effortlessly navigate and analyze your data:

Unified language selector – Discover now offers a unified language selector, allowing users to choose from SQL, PPL, Dashboards Query Language (DQL), or Lucene, making it convenient to work with your preferred query languages in one place.

Natural language query generation – Discover now supports natural language query building for PPL. Enter your questions in plain language, and Discover converts them to PPL syntax, making data exploration simpler and more accessible. This new feature empowers users of different skill levels to get insights without needing to fully understand the PPL syntax.

Powerful query autocomplete – The enhanced query bar includes autocomplete functionality and natural language query generation support, simplifying query building by offering relevant suggestions as you type, making it faster and more efficient to write complex queries

New data selector– The new data selector makes it straightforward to connect to multiple data sources, bringing data from Amazon OpenSearch Service domains and serverless collections, and Amazon S3 into a unified view.

Conclusion

In this post, we discussed the features of the next-generation OpenSearch UI. These improvements streamline data analytics, foster collaboration, and empower you to extract insights more efficiently across various use cases.

You can create your own OpenSearch UI applications today in the US East (N. Virginia), US West (N. California, Oregon), Asia Pacific (Mumbai, Singapore, Sydney, Tokyo), South America (São Paulo), Europe (Frankfurt, Ireland, London, Paris) and Canada (Central) Regions.

About the Authors

Hang (Arthur) Zuo is a Senior Product Manager with Amazon OpenSearch Service. Arthur leads the core experience in the next-gen OpenSearch UI and data migration to Amazon OpenSearch Service. Arthur is passionate about cloud technologies and building data products that help users and businesses gain actionable insights and achieve operational excellence.

Rushabh Vora is a Principal Product Manager for the OpenSearch project of Amazon Web Services. Rushabh leads core experiences in data exploration, dashboards, visualizations, reporting, and data management to help organizations unlock insights at scale. Rushabh is passionate about cloud technologies and building products that enable businesses to make data-driven decisions and achieve operational excellence.

Sohaib Katariwala is a Senior Specialist Solutions Architect at AWS focused on Amazon OpenSearch Service based out of Chicago, IL. His interests are in all things data and analytics. More specifically he loves to help customers use AI in their data strategy to solve modern day challenges.

Arun Lakshmanan is a Search Specialist with Amazon OpenSearch Service based out of Chicago, IL. He works closely with customers on their OpenSearch journey across various use cases including vector search, observability, and security analytics.

Xenia Tupitsyna is a UX Designer at OpenSearch. She is working on user experiences across security analytics solutions, anomaly detection, alerting, and core dashboards.