Title
Add Business Hours Filtering for Link Utilization Reports and Dashboards
Problem Statement
Currently, SolarWinds calculates link utilization based on the selected reporting period (e.g., last 24 hours, 7 days, or 30 days) without providing an option to filter data by business hours. As a result, reports and dashboards include utilization during non-business hours, weekends, and holidays, which can significantly lower average utilization values and make capacity planning less accurate.
Many organizations monitor WAN and Internet links primarily during business operating hours, where utilization is most critical for user experience and network performance.
Requested Enhancement
Introduce a Business Hours option that can be applied to:
- Link Utilization Reports
- Performance Analysis dashboards
- PerfStack widgets
- Modern Dashboards
- Classic Summary Views
- Custom Charts
- Report Scheduler
The feature should allow administrators to:
- Define business hours (e.g., Monday–Friday, 9:00 AM–6:00 PM)
- Create multiple business hour profiles for different regions or departments
- Exclude weekends and public holidays (optional)
- Display utilization based only on the configured business hours
- Compare Business Hours vs. 24×7 utilization
- Apply the filter globally or per report/dashboard widget
Business Benefits
- More accurate bandwidth utilization reporting
- Improved WAN capacity planning
- Better identification of peak usage periods
- More meaningful SLA and management reports
- Reduced need for manual data extraction and external calculations
- Consistent reporting across global sites with different business schedules
Example
Current Average Utilization (24×7):
Business Hours Average (Mon–Fri, 9 AM–6 PM):
The Business Hours view provides a much more accurate representation of actual production traffic.
Expected Outcome
A configurable Business Hours filter that is available across all reporting and dashboard components, enabling organizations to analyze and visualize network utilization during operational hours without requiring custom SQL queries or external reporting tools.
Use Cases
- WAN bandwidth planning
- Internet circuit utilization analysis
- MPLS/SD-WAN performance reporting
- Executive network utilization dashboards
- Monthly operational reports
- SLA compliance reporting
- Regional business-hour monitoring for global organizations
Impact
This enhancement would significantly improve reporting accuracy for enterprise customers by providing utilization metrics that align with real business operations. It would eliminate the need for manual post-processing and make SolarWinds a more effective tool for capacity planning and operational reporting.
