# Calculating time spent in state with Metricbeat and Kibana
**URL:** https://discuss.elastic.co/t/calculating-time-spent-in-state-with-metricbeat-and-kibana/269457
**Category:** Kibana
**Created:** [April 7, 2021, 12:01pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/calculating-time-spent-in-state-with-metricbeat-and-kibana/269457 "2021-04-07T12:01:57Z")
**Posts on this page:** 3
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@m\_x](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/m_x)
#### Post date: [April 7, 2021, 12:01pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/calculating-time-spent-in-state-with-metricbeat-and-kibana/269457/1 "2021-04-07T12:01:57Z")
Hi,
I would like to calculate the time spent in a certain state with Metricbeat and Kibana . For example : how long have the system been up during specified period ? how long have a user spent logged in ?. I'm discovering Kibana and I can't find a way to do this.
I can plot a metric over time but I find that "time spent in state" gives more insight.
As a workaround, I can plot the number of record over states in a histogram. Assuming the period between two record is constant (normally the case with metricbeat), the number of records is a proxy to "time spent".
My use case is gathering usage statistics on endpoint computers.
Thanks
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### Author:  [@wylie](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/wylie)
#### Post date: [April 7, 2021, 2:00pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/calculating-time-spent-in-state-with-metricbeat-and-kibana/269457/2 "2021-04-07T14:00:26Z")
This is one of the main reasons to use the [transforms](https://www.elastic.co/guide/en/elasticsearch/reference/current/transforms.html) feature: your data needs to be pivoted before analysis.
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### Author:  [@system](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/system)
#### Post date: [May 5, 2021, 2:00pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/calculating-time-spent-in-state-with-metricbeat-and-kibana/269457/3 "2021-05-05T14:00:40Z")
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