This, along with ZBXNEXT-8686, will probably be one of the most powerful capabilities of Zabbix 7.0. For those of us that have extremely large, multi-tenant and complex monitoring environments the ability to have a global dashboard to rule them all with the ability to dynamically change the data displayed in the widgets with these navigator widgets will truly set Zabbix apart from the rest.

I've already made many suggestions in the ticket that detailed the framework changes (ZBXNEXT-8145), but they are probably worth mentioning here as well for the benefit of others who are interested in providing suggestions or feedback.

1. The host navigator widget should allow for host group, host and host tag filters. Though, it will also be necessary to allow all host groups to be visible. i.e. host groups of Latvia/Riga/SiteA and UnitedStates/NewYork/SiteB should be represented like (maybe the ">" are actually checkboxes instead):

   Collapsed:
   > Latvia
   > UnitedStates
   
   Expanded:
   v Latvia
     v Riga
       v SiteA
         - host1
         - host2
   v UnitedStates
     v NewYork
       - host7
       - host8
       v SiteB
         - host3
         - host4
         - host5
       v SiteC
         - host6

   if a host group is selected the filters of connected widgets should use all hosts in the host group(s) selected. I personally think all hosts in every child group should be included implicitly. Meaning, If I selected "NewYork" in the example above, connected widgets will filter for host3, host4, host5, host6, host7 and host8. However, it might be useful to have an option that does not implicitly select all child host groups and hosts.

1. The item navigator widget should allow for item tag, item pattern and item list filters. It will be very important to not restrict the widget to requiring item pattern or item list. Tags are the best way to group items together without creating long, complicated item names. Boolean logic for item tag filters will be necessary, like the filters on the latest data page today. 
2. Both host and item navigator should allow for multi-selection. Though, it would also be good to have the ability to select all available options with a single click.
3. The host navigator widget should allow for filtering all widgets and dashboard pages within the dashboard. The reason this will be important is when there are many dashboard pages users may want to change everything on all pages to display information for the 'Latvia' host group. It would be ideal to not have to make the Latvia selection on every page or multiple times. It might even be useful to make it so the host tree navigator could sit in the space above the dashboard page tabs and to the left of the time period picker and have it persist across all dashboard pages so that you can change the host/host group filter from any page on the dashboard. This will help with click-counts as well, so users don't have to keep going back to change the host filters. This type of global dashboard control won't be as important for item tree navigation since I believe the most common use case for item tree selections will be to only change the data displayed on no more than a few widgets at a time. In summary, I think a checkbox in the host tree navigator widget configuration could be named "enable global dashboard control", where it will then control all widgets for the whole dashboard.
4. The last host and item filters should be remembered, either in a session cookie or in the user's profile. So, when the user navigates away from the dashboard then comes back, their last-used filters will be in place.
5. If no filters are selected, connected widgets should probably display nothing to minimize load on the database, php-fpm and the browser. I personally believe a message saying something like "Please make a host/item tree selection" would be perfectly acceptable. Or, extend the widgets to permit the ability to customize that message in each widget. This way, the dashboard could contain a bit of a tutorial instructing the user of what to do with a custom message.
6. Only host groups and items that users have permission to see should be made visible
7. In cases where multiple items are selected, connected widgets should permit the use of aggregations on a per item or dataset level. For example, I might have a switch with 100 ports and I list those 100 ports' ingest rate metrics in the item tree navigator widget. It is connected to a graph widget and I would like the graph to display the aggregated ingest rate when I select multiple items from the tree.
8. A global in defines.inc.php or a configuration in the GUI should be made available to control the number of items displayed in the tree. I'm not sure if it makes sense to have such a control for the host navigator. Ideally, users should be narrowing down the item tree with good item tag, pattern or list filters in the widget config beforehand. 

Really looking forward to this and I hope others can provide their thoughts and suggestions to make these widgets very powerful features of the Zabbix UI.

GRyan337, thanks for sharing your ideas! I hope that most of them will be implemented in 7.0.

Thanks alexei for reading my comments! I'm happy to provide any ideas and use cases that can help the Zabbix company with the design of some of these features.

Great idea!

Implemented in development branch feature/ZBXNEXT-8685-6.5 

Hi! Just played around with this feature, and i think it's kinda nice but unfortunately it seems GRyan337 his suggestions for the visibility of hostgroups did not make it?

Config:

Result:

I think it limits the feature a bit as the list will be quickly way too long to keep an overview / ordered structure.

Is this something what will be added/

I just realised there is a "group by" option which i missed... ignore my comment

Hi, brian.baekel!

Glad to see you jumping right into this feature already so early on. The "Host groups" configuration field is used to narrow down the hosts selected for displaying in the widget. The same way how it works in other widgets.

Have you tried adding the "Group by" attributes in the widget configuration in your test environment? These settings will impact how the hosts are grouped in hierarchy in the widget view. There is an option to group by host group, host tags and also problem severities. By adding the "Group by" attributes, you will have the possibility to expand/collapse respective groups and see relevant sub-groups and, of course, the corresponding hosts. 

ddauksa Thanks for your reply! Seconds before you replied, i realised I missed something - works brilliantly, except for nested groups it seems:

edit: My assumption was that the nested groups would be presented under the main group (just like as in the map navigator widget where they get nested)

brian.baekel - Yes, I agree with you. If host groups of USA, USA/NEW_YORK, and USA/NEW_YORK/MANHATTEN all exist, it would be preferred to see

(all expanded)

> USA

      > NEW_YORK

            > MANHATTEN

(all collapsed)

> USA

It looks like ddauksa's screenshot example does display the nested host group correctly, I think? Maybe just a bug that'll get fixed up in testing?

Hi ZabbixDev,
as I can see the actual implementation cam be nice but for me not so useful.
Possible problems:

• Enterprise enviroment with > 1000 hosts - Not easy to find the host...
• Query penalties with big enviroments
• The widget can be very large (horizontaly) if we have multiple nested hostgroup
• We can use the tags to filter the Host but if we use templates only the "Template tag" are usable on the widget?

My suggestion is to have something like you can see on Grafana a Dropdown menu with quick search and multiple selection.

Sorry for all of my complaining on this feature but keep in mind my suggestion

Thank sso much

dimitri.bellini, I think most of your suggestion will be resolved once we introduce quick search functionality. It is coming but not in 7.0.

alexei Ok, thanks so much!

Available in versions:

• pre-7.0.0beta3 9de7db00499

Documentation (7.0) updated:

• Introduction > What's new in Zabbix 7.0.0
• Web interface > Frontend sections > Dashboards > Dashboard widgets > Host navigator

• API > Appendix 2. Changes from 6.4 to 7.0 (updated dashboard and templatedashboard API)
• API > Method reference > Dashboard > Dashboard object
• API > Method reference > Dashboard > Dashboard widget fields > Host navigator
• API > Method reference > Template dashboard > Template dashboard object

Also updated multiple widget pages (Gauge, Graph (Classic), etc.) referencing Host navigator as a compatible widget in parameter descriptions (mostly Override host).

Zabbix Team / alexei - In future releases (7.2 / 7.4), will this widget be extended further to be able to control more widgets? I see the widgets with Override Host can be controlled, but I for sure know that many users would highly desire the ability to control some of the more advanced SVG widgets (i.e. pie chart, graph, honeycomb), with the ability to select multiple hosts at a time for data set aggregations. I'm just curious if there are plans for this in the roadmap to come or if we need to submit a new feature request.

Also, will there be a possibility to have the host tree display split on the "/" for each subgroup of the Host group? I see that we can nest multiple host tags and order them to create a hierarchy, but the already existing hierarchy for nested groups would be a nice way to present the host tree per my suggestions a few months ago. I think brian.baekel also agreed with this.

I'm also happy to submit new feature / change requests if you feel that is the right path forward.

GRyan337 The host navigator widget is able to control any widget that accepts hostid, i.e. selection of a host. Now we are working on extending existing set of widgets (including graph, honeycomb, etc) so that they will be able to be controlled by accepting host selection from Host navigator or any other widget (like Geomap) that will also emit hostid. It is coming in 7.0!

Support of "/" subgroups is a really nice idea that I hope will be implemented later in 7.x.

alexei - this is great news! I'm really glad support for the other widgets is also coming in 7.0! I know 7.0 was pushed back by a quarter, but I think some of the features, like the navigators, are well worth the small delay. 

GRyan337 Thanks! Note that enabling navigation for existing widgets is being developed under this ticket ZBXNEXT-8956.

All - I extended the host navigator widget to add some functionality that I mentioned above, as well as some other things. These changes also help me greatly with my customers. There are some other suggestions above that I think my modifications will help to solve, except for checkbox selection of multiple hosts. Code-wise, this is achievable, but all receiving widgets would need to be able to handle multiple IDs (also doable, but the widgets have to be changed).

You can download my work here: Host and Hostgroup Navigator Widget