As a tool for visualizing elasticsearch data, Kibana is a perfect choice. Its UI interface allows creating a dashboard, search, and visualizations in minutes and analyzing the data with its help.

Despite having tons of visualizations, the open source version of Kibana does not have advanced reporting capability. Automating export of data into CSV, Excel, or PDF requires additional plugins.  

We wrote an honest and unbiased review of the following tools that are available for exporting data directly from Elasticsearch.

1. Flexmonster Pivot plugin for Kibana 
2. Sentinl (for Kibana)
3. Skedler Reports

1. Flexmonster Pivot plugin for Kibana

https://github.com/flexmonster/pivot-kibana

Flexmonster Pivot covers the need in summarizing business data and displaying results in a cross-table format interactively & fast. All these Excel-like features, to which so many of you are used to, and its extended API will multiply your analytics results remarkably.

Though initially created as a pivot table component that can be incorporated into any app that uses JavaScript, it can serve as a part of Kibana as well. You can connect it to the Elasticsearch index, fetch the documents from it and start exploring the data.

Pros of Flexmonster Pivot plugin for Kibana

• Flexmonster is in line with the concept of Kibana
• Simply embeddable Pivot for Kibana

Cons of Flexmonster Pivot plugin for Kibana

• To automate the exporting of data on a periodic basis, you need to write your own cron job.
• Flexmonster Pivot plugin installation is a bit tricky. 

2. Sentinl (for Kibana)

https://github.com/sirensolutions/sentinl

SENTINL extends Kibana with Alerting and Reporting functionality to monitor, notify and report on data series changes using standard queries, programmable validators and a variety of configurable actions – Think of it as a free and independent “Watcher” which also has scheduled “Reporting”.

SENTINL is also designed to simplify the process of creating and managing alerts and reports in Siren Investigate/Kibana 6.x via its native App Interface, or by using native watcher tools in Kibana 6.x+.

Pros of Sentinl

• It’s simple to install and configure
• Added as a Kibana plugin.

Cons of Sentinl

• This tool supports only 6x versions of Elasticsearch.  It does not support 7.x.
• For non-technical users, it’s difficult to use 
• Automation requires scripting which makes it laborious

3. Skedler Reports

https://www.skedler.com/

Disclosure: Skedler Reports is one of our products.

Skedler offers a simple and easy to add reporting and alerting solution for Elastic Stack and Grafana.  There is also a plugin for Kibana that is easy to install and use with the Elasticsearch data. It’s called Skedler Reports as Kibana Plugin. 

Pros of Skedler Reports

• Simple to install, configure, and use
• Send HTML, PDF, XLS, CSV reports on-demand or periodically via email or #slack
• Report setup takes less than 5 minute
• Easy to use, no coding required

Cons of Skedler Reports

• It requires a paid license which includes software and also enterprise support
• Installation is difficult for users who are not fully familiar with Elastic Stack or Grafana

What tools do you use?

Do you have to regularly export data from Kibana for external analysis or reporting purposes? Do you use any other third-party plugins?   Email us about the tool at hello at skedler.com.