# Dashboards using \_cat APIs

**URL:** <https://discuss.elastic.co/t/dashboards-using-cat-apis/350888>\
**Category:** Kibana\
**Tags:** elastic-stack-monitoring, elastic-stack-security\
**Created:** [January 11, 2024, 7:46pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/dashboards-using-cat-apis/350888 "2024-01-11T19:46:41Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 3\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![jcruz](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/elastic/user_avatar/discuss.elastic.co/jcruz/32/91772_2.png) [@jcruz](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/jcruz)\
**Post date:** [January 11, 2024, 7:46pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/dashboards-using-cat-apis/350888/1 "2024-01-11T19:46:41Z")

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Hello guys,

I would like to create some visualizations using the \_cat/indices API, so I can monitoring and understand the index usage during time.

Is there any way to get the \_cat API output into some lens panels to create dashboards?

Thanks in advance!

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**Author:** ![tsullivan](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/elastic/user_avatar/discuss.elastic.co/tsullivan/32/31077_2.png) [@tsullivan](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/tsullivan)\
**Post date:** [January 19, 2024, 11:04pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/dashboards-using-cat-apis/350888/2 "2024-01-19T23:04:32Z")

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The `_cat/indices` API will not give you usage over time. Also, Lens doesn't support arbitrary APIs.

To acquire the data in Elasticsearch and visualize it in Lens, you would need to poll that API and store the results in documents that also include a timestamp.

Another thing to try is to enable monitoring in Elasticsearch, which will internally collect this data and store it in the `.monitoring-es-*` index pattern. You can define a user role that has permission to read that data, and those users will be able to create Lens charts based on that data.

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![system](https://us1.discourse-cdn.com/elastic/original/3X/1/a/1ac57faf039f6b580b3f104ef42a2a89e41014de.png) [@system](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/system)\
**Post date:** [February 16, 2024, 11:05pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/dashboards-using-cat-apis/350888/3 "2024-02-16T23:05:32Z")

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