Change mappings with existing Dashboard

[benvantende]

Heyla, I am new to Elastic, but having loads of fun already. I am analyzing a spreadsheet and have already created a Dashboard I am using for my team to look at. It is truly amazing what I can do out of the box after importing the csv data with the machine learning module. I read a few tutorials, but I could not really find what I am looking for.

I have two things I would like to change (mapping) though without destroying my dashboard. I don't want to remove my current index with the visualizations I already got out of it. So the question is how do I change mapping on my current index or rather how do I preserve the current index.

1. I have one column (field) that is indexed as text and thus makes it non-aggragatable. I understand I need to change that to keyword. No idea why it is indexed to text. Other similar columns were just indexed to keyword.

2. I have a date column with flat dates formatted like '1-Aug-2018'. I tried to change the field type during import, but that threw an error. As far as I have experimented it is currently not recognized as date field. What can I do to convert that back to 'date'?

....and all of that without losing my current dashboard. I would really appreciate if someone can point me in the right direction.

Thanks Ben

[benvantende]

Hi, I posted this question a few days ago. It would be cool if someone can help me out here.

[azasypkin]

Hey @benvantende,

Changing the mapping would mean invalidating already indexed documents. Instead, you should create a new index with the correct mappings and reindex your data into that index.

Once you have new index, you may need to recreate index pattern (if it doesn't cover new index name). And if you do so you'll just need to update index pattern id your existing visualizations are based on, see Visualisation don't work even after recreating index templates for details. Try with one vis first, see how well it works and then move on and update the rest.

Let me know if you have any questions.

Best,
Oleg

[benvantende]

Hey Oleg,

Thanks for the answer. That makes me understand the process a bit better. I still do have the two questions on how to change the property of the two fields.

Can you give me a clue there?

gRTz ben

[azasypkin]

Sure, but please share the index mapping you have right now (can copy it in Management -> Index Management, click on index and look into Mapping tab).