When creating a probe, an operator wants to make it easy to view that probe’s...

In Apstra IBA, a probe is a directed graph made of stages (data you can inspect) and processors (operations that transform/aggregate data). While stages can be inspected during probe construction, the simplest operational way to make probe results readily consumable by day-2 operators is to publish them through widgets that can be placed on Analytics dashboards. A dashboard widget is the visualization and presentation object that renders either (1) counts of anomalies or (2) the outputs produced by stages and processors in a probe. Creating a widget tied to the probe output means the operator can open a dashboard and immediately see the metric trends, tables, or anomaly indicators without navigating into probe internals.

A predefined probe is optional content (a starting template) and is not required for visibility. Processors and stages are internal probe building blocks, but they do not, by themselves, create an operator-friendly view in the UI. In a Junos v24.4 EVPN-VXLAN fabric, this is especially useful for link utilization, drops, latency signals, or any custom telemetry pipeline: you build the probe logic once, then expose the key results in a widget that persists across operational workflows and can be shared on standardized dashboards for capacity planning and troubleshooting.

Verified Juniper sources (URLs):

https://www.juniper.net/documentation/us/en/software/apstra4.2/apstra-user-guide/topics/concept/widgets.html

https://www.juniper.net/documentation/us/en/software/apstra4.2/apstra-user-guide/topics/topic-map/widget-stage-create.html

https://www.juniper.net/documentation/us/en/software/apstra4.2/apstra-user-guide/topics/concept/probes.html