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Simple Observability Dashboard - Roadmap

This document outlines the planned features and enhancements for the Simple Observability Dashboard project. Items are organized by theme and priority.

Legend

  • ✅ Completed
  • 🚧 In Progress
  • 📋 Planned
  • 💡 Idea/Future Consideration

🎨 User Experience & Interface

Theme Support

Status: 📋 Planned
Priority: High

Implement theme support to improve user experience across different preferences and environments.

Features:

  • Light theme (default)
  • Dark theme
  • System preference detection (follows OS settings)
  • Theme persistence across sessions
  • Theme toggle in settings UI
  • CSS custom properties for easy theme management
  • Smooth transitions between themes

Technical Considerations:

  • Use CSS variables for color schemes
  • Store preference in localStorage/session
  • Consider accessibility (WCAG contrast requirements)
  • Apply theme to all pages (dashboard, settings, etc.)

🔔 Notification System

Status Change Notifications

Status: 📋 Planned
Priority: High

Alert users when a service transitions between health states (Healthy → Degraded → Unhealthy).

Notification Channels

Email Notifications

Status: 📋 Planned

  • SMTP integration for email alerts
  • Configurable recipients per service/environment
  • Customizable email templates
  • Rate limiting to prevent notification spam
  • Aggregated digests (optional)

Configuration:

{
  "notifications": {
    "email": {
      "enabled": true,
      "smtpServer": "smtp.example.com",
      "smtpPort": 587,
      "useSsl": true,
      "fromAddress": "observability@example.com",
      "recipients": ["ops-team@example.com"],
      "serviceSpecificRecipients": {
        "Payment API": ["payments-team@example.com"],
        "User Service": ["identity-team@example.com"]
      }
    }
  }
}
Webhook Notifications

Status: 📋 Planned
Priority: High

Send HTTP POST requests to custom endpoints when health status changes.

Features:

  • Configurable webhook URLs per service or globally
  • Custom headers support (for authentication)
  • Retry logic with exponential backoff
  • Payload customization
  • Signature validation (HMAC)

Use Cases:

  • Integration with Slack, Microsoft Teams, Discord
  • Custom alerting systems
  • PagerDuty, Opsgenie integration
  • Custom workflow automation

Configuration:

{
  "notifications": {
    "webhooks": [
      {
        "name": "Slack Alerts",
        "url": "https://hooks.slack.com/services/YOUR/WEBHOOK/URL",
        "enabled": true,
        "headers": {
          "Content-Type": "application/json"
        },
        "filters": {
          "environments": ["PROD"],
          "statusChanges": ["Healthy -> Degraded", "* -> Unhealthy"]
        }
      },
      {
        "name": "Custom API",
        "url": "https://api.example.com/alerts",
        "enabled": true,
        "headers": {
          "Authorization": "Bearer YOUR_TOKEN",
          "X-Webhook-Secret": "your-secret"
        }
      }
    ]
  }
}

Notification Features

  • Filter notifications by environment (e.g., only PROD alerts)
  • Filter by status transition (e.g., only alert on degraded → unhealthy)
  • Cooldown periods to prevent alert fatigue
  • Notification history/audit log
  • Test notification capability in settings UI

💾 Configuration Persistence

Current State

Status: ✅ Completed

  • JSON file configuration loading
  • In-memory configuration updates via API
  • Settings UI for configuration management

File-Based Persistence

Status: 📋 Planned
Priority: High

Problem: Configuration changes via the Settings UI are currently in-memory only and lost on restart.

Solutions:

Option 1: Direct File Write

Write configuration changes back to dashboardsettings.json.

Pros:

  • Simple implementation
  • Works in basic Docker scenarios with volume mounts
  • No external dependencies

Cons:

  • Not suitable for read-only filesystems
  • Doesn't work well in container orchestration (Kubernetes, etc.)
  • Challenging in Azure App Service with container support

Option 2: Cloud Storage Integration

Persist configuration to cloud storage providers.

Azure Blob Storage

Status: 💡 Idea

  • Store configuration in Azure Blob Storage
  • Read on startup, write on changes
  • Works seamlessly with Azure App Service
  • Support for different environments via container paths

Configuration:

{
  "persistence": {
    "type": "AzureBlob",
    "connectionString": "DefaultEndpointsProtocol=https;...",
    "containerName": "observability-config",
    "blobName": "dashboard-config.json"
  }
}
AWS S3

Status: 💡 Idea

  • Similar to Azure Blob approach
  • Works with AWS ECS, EKS, App Runner
Generic HTTP Endpoint

Status: 💡 Idea

  • Allow configuration to be fetched/updated via HTTP API
  • Useful for custom configuration management systems

🔌 Plugin System

Extensibility Architecture

Status: 💡 Idea
Priority: Medium

Allow users to extend the dashboard functionality without modifying core code.

Challenges:

  • .NET plugins require careful assembly loading
  • Docker volume mounting of DLLs
  • Type safety and versioning
  • UI extensibility is complex

Potential Plugin Types:

1. Persistence Plugins

Allow custom storage backends via plugin.

public interface IPersistencePlugin
{
    Task<DashboardConfiguration> LoadConfigurationAsync(CancellationToken cancellationToken);
    Task SaveConfigurationAsync(DashboardConfiguration config, CancellationToken cancellationToken);
}

Docker Usage:

docker run -d \
  -p 8080:8080 \
  -v $(pwd)/plugins:/app/plugins \
  -e PLUGIN_PERSISTENCE=/app/plugins/MyCustomStorage.dll \
  simple-observatory/dashboard:latest

2. Notification Plugins

Custom notification channels.

public interface INotificationPlugin
{
    Task SendNotificationAsync(NotificationContext context, CancellationToken cancellationToken);
}

3. Health Check Plugins

Custom health check logic/transformations.

public interface IHealthCheckPlugin
{
    Task<HealthResult> ProcessHealthCheckAsync(HealthMetadata metadata, CancellationToken cancellationToken);
}

UI Considerations:

  • Plugin settings could be JSON-based (no custom UI initially)
  • Future: Consider Blazor Server components for UI extensibility
  • Documentation templates for plugin developers

📊 Dashboard Enhancements

Enhanced Visualizations

Status: 📋 Planned
Priority: Medium

  • Historical health data (uptime graphs)
  • Response time trends
  • Service dependency mapping
  • Multi-dashboard support (different views for different teams)

Service Grouping

Status: 📋 Planned
Priority: Medium

  • Group services by tags/categories
  • Collapsible service groups
  • Custom views per user/role

Advanced Filtering

Status: 📋 Planned
Priority: Low

  • Filter services by status
  • Search services by name
  • Filter by environment
  • Saved filter presets

🔐 Authentication & Authorization

Status: 💡 Idea
Priority: Low

Currently, the dashboard has no authentication. This is intentional for simplicity, but may be needed for certain deployments.

Options:

  • Basic authentication
  • OAuth/OIDC integration
  • Azure AD integration
  • Read-only vs. admin roles
  • Service-level permissions

Note: Many users deploy this behind a VPN or use reverse proxy authentication, so built-in auth may not be high priority.

🔧 Technical Improvements

Health Check Enhancements

Status: 📋 Planned
Priority: Medium

  • Retry logic for transient failures
  • Circuit breaker pattern
  • Parallel health check execution with throttling
  • Health check result caching (with TTL)

Performance Optimizations

Status: 📋 Planned
Priority: Low

  • Response caching
  • Compression (gzip/brotli)
  • WebSocket support for real-time updates (instead of polling)
  • Pagination for large service lists

Observability for the Dashboard Itself

Status: 💡 Idea
Priority: Low

  • Export its own health endpoint
  • Metrics endpoint (Prometheus format)
  • Structured logging improvements
  • Distributed tracing support

📦 Deployment & Operations

Docker Improvements

Status: 📋 Planned
Priority: Medium

  • Multi-architecture images (ARM support)
  • Smaller image size (Alpine base, trimmed runtime)
  • Health check in Dockerfile
  • Better environment variable support

Kubernetes Deployment

Status: 📋 Planned
Priority: Medium

  • Helm chart
  • ConfigMap/Secret integration
  • Horizontal Pod Autoscaling support
  • Ingress examples

Configuration Management

Status: 📋 Planned
Priority: Medium

  • Environment variable overrides for all settings
  • Secrets management integration (Azure Key Vault, AWS Secrets Manager)
  • Configuration validation on startup
  • Configuration hot-reload (without restart)

📖 Documentation

User Documentation

Status: 🚧 In Progress

  • ✅ Basic setup guide
  • ✅ Configuration reference
  • 📋 Troubleshooting guide
  • 📋 Best practices guide
  • 📋 Video tutorials

Developer Documentation

Status: 📋 Planned

  • Plugin development guide
  • API documentation (OpenAPI/Swagger)
  • Architecture decision records (ADRs)
  • Contribution guidelines

🌍 Internationalization

Status: 💡 Idea
Priority: Low

  • Multi-language support
  • Localized date/time formats
  • Timezone handling

🧪 Testing & Quality

Status: 🚧 In Progress

  • ✅ Basic unit tests
  • 📋 Integration tests
  • 📋 End-to-end tests (Playwright/Selenium)
  • 📋 Performance tests
  • 📋 Load tests for large service counts

Release Milestones

v1.0.0 (Current)

  • ✅ Core dashboard functionality
  • ✅ Settings UI
  • ✅ JSON configuration
  • ✅ Docker support

v1.1.0 (Next)

  • Theme support (light/dark/system)
  • Configuration file persistence
  • Webhook notifications
  • Enhanced error handling

v1.2.0

  • Email notifications
  • Azure Blob Storage persistence
  • Historical data tracking
  • Response time monitoring

v2.0.0 (Future)

  • Plugin system architecture
  • Authentication/authorization
  • WebSocket real-time updates
  • Advanced visualizations

Contributing

We welcome contributions! If you'd like to work on any of these features, please:

  1. Open an issue to discuss the feature
  2. Reference this roadmap in your PR
  3. Follow our contribution guidelines

Feedback

Have ideas not on this roadmap? Open an issue with the enhancement label to discuss!