Usage dashboard :: Cerbos Authorization Management Platform // Documentation
Usage dashboard
The Usage Dashboard provides comprehensive observability into your authorization service, allowing you to monitor key metrics, view trends, and gain insights into how your Cerbos Hub workspace is utilized. At the organization level, the dashboard aggregates authorization metrics from all your workspaces into a single view, giving platform owners and engineering leaders a complete picture of request volumes, policy distribution, and usage trends across the entire organization.
Summary metrics
The top of the dashboard displays three key metrics for the current month, each showing the change from the previous month:
Active principals
The number of unique principals (users, services, or applications) making authorization requests. Track this to understand adoption and identify unexpected usage patterns.
Decisions
The total number of authorization decisions made via the Check API. A single API call can check multiple actions, so this count may exceed the number of calls.
Query plans
The total number of Plan API calls used to generate query filters for data access.
Trend charts
Active principals
A line chart showing the number of unique principals over time. Use this to identify growth trends, seasonal patterns, or unexpected drops in usage.
Check calls
A stacked bar chart showing Check API activity by month, broken down by outcome:
- Check calls: Total number of Check API requests
- Allowed actions: Decisions that granted access
- Denied actions: Decisions that rejected access
A sudden spike in denied actions could indicate policy changes that are stricter than intended, requests for policies that don’t exist, or application issues such as typos in resource or action names.
Plan calls
A stacked bar chart showing Plan API activity by month, broken down by outcome:
- Plan calls: Total number of Plan API requests
- Allowed actions: Plans that grant unconditional access
- Denied actions: Plans that deny access unconditionally
- Conditional actions: Plans that include conditions to filter data
This breakdown helps you understand how query planning is being used to generate database filters and conditional access patterns.
Usage details
The table at the bottom provides month-by-month metrics with the following columns:
| Column | Description |
|---|---|
| Month | The calendar month for this row of data |
| Call type | Whether the row represents Check or Plan API calls |
| Unique principals | Count of distinct principals making requests of this type |
| Total calls | Number of API calls made |
| Call breakdown | Visual breakdown showing allowed, denied, and (for Plan calls) conditional outcomes |