# First time user, few questions before moving into production

**URL:** <https://discuss.elastic.co/t/first-time-user-few-questions-before-moving-into-production/65633>\
**Category:** Elasticsearch\
**Created:** [November 10, 2016, 10:25am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/first-time-user-few-questions-before-moving-into-production/65633 "2016-11-10T10:25:48Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 3\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![cormack12](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/e19adc/32.png) [@cormack12](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/cormack12)\
**Post date:** [November 10, 2016, 10:25am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/first-time-user-few-questions-before-moving-into-production/65633/1 "2016-11-10T10:25:48Z")

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Hi,

After hitting a problem, I've finally managed to get elasticsearch configured with kibana. I'm using an HTTP sender to post directly into elastic and it all seems to be working OK. I've set up a test index and am ready to actually switch this on and move it into production. But just want to clarify a few things first to make sure I fully understand everything.

My HTTP sender gets a response like this when posting. I assume all this is normal and OK? Pretty self explanatory - is total the total amount of records in the index?

```
 {
      "_index" : "testmsg",
      "_type" : "msg",
      "_id" : "AVhJxWWd__W47b1DFlAg",
      "_version" : 1,
      "_shards" : {
        "total" : 2,
        "successful" : 1,
        "failed" : 0
      },
      "created" : true
    }

```

I'm guessing Kibana is used mainly for visualisation of the data and I'm going to get stuck into that now. Do you guys use Kibana as the main query/lookup tool as well? For example querying on an object property of a specific type (e.g. I might want to see all 'email' flagged messages per \_msg object from the testmsg \_index). I know Kibana has the query filter at the top, is this the most efficient way - I've been using Postman as well.

I know what \_index, \_type and \_id are from the kibana docs - what is \_score?

When I set up my index, I used Postman. One of the fields does contain date/time data but when I loaded the index into Kibana, and had the checkbox ticked for 'contains date/time' data it didn't bring back the fields to 'pick'. Does it require a certain property name to pick up or data format?

I realise some of these are related to kibana as well but any pointers appreciated before I decide to start logging properly.

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![dadoonet](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/elastic/user_avatar/discuss.elastic.co/dadoonet/32/137187_2.png) [@dadoonet](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/dadoonet)\
**Post date:** [November 10, 2016, 10:56am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/first-time-user-few-questions-before-moving-into-production/65633/2 "2016-11-10T10:56:45Z")

</div>

Please format your code using `</>` icon instead of quoting. It will make your post more readable.

`2` means that you have 2 shards for this index.

`_score` is all about relevancy. How well a document match your query if you compare to another document.  
By default, results are sorted to give first the most relevant documents.

Not sure I understood the other questions though.

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**Author:** ![system](https://us1.discourse-cdn.com/elastic/original/3X/1/a/1ac57faf039f6b580b3f104ef42a2a89e41014de.png) [@system](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/system)\
**Post date:** [December 8, 2016, 10:57am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/first-time-user-few-questions-before-moving-into-production/65633/3 "2016-12-08T10:57:18Z")

</div>

Closed on December 8, 2016, 10:57am UTC

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