Boards
A board is a live page of charts, alert lists and alarm feeds for your
network, meant for a second monitor or a NOC wall. Claude builds boards for
you: describe what you want, open the link it gives you, and the page follows
every change Claude makes within seconds. Your boards are listed at
https://sz-mcp.lanpulse.com/boards.
How do I get a board?
Section titled “How do I get a board?”Ask Claude, with the SZ-MCP connector on:
Build me a board for the switches: ports up, PoE, errors, and switch alarms.
Put AP clients per hall and the open alarms on a board.
Claude checks each query against your metrics first, creates the board, and
returns its URL (/boards/<id>). Keep the page open while you ask for changes
— “make the clients chart 12 wide”, “add a gauge for controller CPU” — and
they appear as Claude makes them.
The setup checklist can also create a ready-made Network overview board in one click.
Creating and changing boards needs the engineer role or above. Everyone in the organisation can view them.
What can a panel show?
Section titled “What can a panel show?”| Panel | Shows |
|---|---|
timeseries | A PromQL query over the board’s time range, as lines (up to 30 series) |
stat | The current value, one tile per series |
gauge | The current value on a dial, with min and max |
bar | The current value per series as bars, sorted (10 rows by default, up to 50) |
table | The current value per series as rows |
alerts | Current alert problems, optionally for one rule, some states, or one zone or location |
events | Controller alarms (and events), newest first, optionally by severity or place |
Metric panels take a PromQL expr, a unit (%, dBm, bps, W, …), and
optional thresholds (op, warn, crit) that colour values and draw lines.
Panels sit on a 12-column grid; by default time series and tables are 6 wide
and stats and gauges 3. A board holds up to 40 panels, and an organisation
up to 50 boards. A board’s range defaults to 6 hours and can be up to
400 days; long ranges run on hourly or daily rollups, like any
metrics query.
A panel whose query fails shows its error without breaking the rest of the board.
What are board variables?
Section titled “What are board variables?”A variable is a dropdown on the board that picks one inventory entity, such
as a zone, AP group, switch group or location. Panels use it as $name, for
example ap_clients{within="$hall"}, so one board serves every hall. A board
can have up to 6 variables. Each always has a value: its default, or else the
entity with the most devices under it.
Your choice is kept in the page URL as ?var.<name>=<entity id>, so a link
opens with the same selection.
How does the page stay up to date?
Section titled “How does the page stay up to date?”The page holds a live connection and the server pushes changes to it. When Claude (or someone else) changes the board, the page reloads it at once. When new data arrives (a poll, an alarm, an inventory sync, an alert changing), the server tells the page, at most every 10 seconds, and the page refreshes its panels shortly after. The header shows live while pushes are arriving.
If the connection can’t be held (a proxy that blocks WebSockets, for example), the header shows polling: the page checks for board changes every 4 seconds and refreshes data every 30 seconds. While live, data is still refreshed at least every 5 minutes.
Can I change the layout myself?
Section titled “Can I change the layout myself?”Yes, engineers and above can arrange panels on the page; everything else about a panel is built through Claude. Click Edit layout and each panel gets controls to move it earlier or later (◀ ▶), make it narrower or wider (W− W+, 1 to 12 columns) and shorter or taller (H− H+, 1 to 4 rows). Click Done when finished. Outside layout mode, the × on a panel removes it after a confirmation, and Delete on the boards list deletes a whole board (and its view-only links).
How do I put a board on a wall screen?
Section titled “How do I put a board on a wall screen?”Click Kiosk. It opens the board without the site’s navigation or controls,
at the same URL with ?kiosk=1, keeping your variable choices. For a screen
that nobody signs in on, use a view-only link.
Can a panel become an alert?
Section titled “Can a panel become an alert?”Yes. A metric panel’s thresholds have the same shape as an alert rule’s, so
Claude can turn a panel into a threshold rule with boards.to_alert, filling in
the board’s variables. Like any rule, it is a dry run first, showing what the
rule would flag now, and is saved when you confirm. Ask: “Turn the PoE panel
on the switch board into an alert.”