Grafana 11.5 release: easily share Grafana dashboards and panels, secure frontend code for plugins, and more
New year, new Grafana release!
Grafana 11.5 is here with new features to enhance how you can share, migrate, and alert on all your data in Grafana.
Below are just some of the highlights from the latest Grafana release. If you are looking for more details about all the changes in this release, refer to the changelog or the What’s New documentation.
Sharing Grafana dashboards and panels
Grafana dashboards: improved sharing experience
Generally available in all editions of Grafana
You have so many beautiful Grafana dashboards; now it’s time to share them with the world! Introducing a redesigned sharing experience for your Grafana dashboards that is streamlined, easier to navigate, and more focused on what you want to do.
The redesigned experience features a more visible and accessible Share button that provides options based on common use cases, and a new Export option to choose between JSON and PDF. Watch the video below for a full demo.
Grafana panels: improved sharing experience
Noticing a theme? As part of Grafana 11.5, we’ve also redesigned the experience for sharing a panel. Now, when you open the panel actions menu, there are three sharing options:
- Share a link: For internal sharing with users in your organization.
- Share an embed: Allows you to embed the panel as an iframe.
- Share a snapshot: Allows you to share an interactive panel publicly, with sensitive data removed.
Note: The option to create a library panel has been moved from the sharing options, and is now accessible under More in the panel actions menu when you’re in edit mode.
Grafana dashboard panel images: customizable & shareable
Generally available in all editions of Grafana
Finally we’ve made some big changes to the panel image sharing experience. When you share a panel link, there’s a new Panel preview section where you can:
- Customize a panel image.
- See a preview of the panel image.
- Download and share the image without a URL.
You can also customize the image by updating the width, height, and scale of it:
To learn more about all of these changes to how you can share Grafana dashboards and panels, refer to the Share dashboards and panels documentation and the Shared dashboards documentation.
Managing data: ad-hoc filters
Available in public preview in all editions of Grafana
A big change in 11.5 is how ad-hoc filters work. Previously, you had to navigate a few dropdown menus to build one out. We’ve streamlined this process and now it takes fewer clicks to create powerful filters on your data.
Check out a full demo below:
To try out the redesigned filters, enable the newFiltersUI feature flag. Read more in our dashboards documentation.
New in data sources
Secure your frontend plugin code: Plugin Frontend Sandbox
Available in private preview in all editions of Grafana
The Plugin Frontend Sandbox is a security feature that isolates plugin frontend code from the main Grafana application.
When enabled, plugins run in a separate JavaScript context, which provides security benefits such as:
- Preventing plugins from modifying parts of the Grafana interface outside their designated areas
- Stopping plugins from interfering with other plugins’ functionality
- Protecting core Grafana features from being altered by plugins
- Preventing plugins from modifying global browser objects and behaviors
Plugins running inside the Frontend Sandbox should continue to work normally without any noticeable changes in their intended functionality. To learn more, including how to enable the feature, refer to our Plugin Frontend Sandbox documentation.
Elasticsearch data source plugin: cross-cluster search
Available in public preview in all editions of Grafana
The Elasticsearch data source plugin now offers support for Elasticsearch’s cross-cluster search feature.
If you’re a big Elasticsearch user, you might have multiple clusters set up for geographical separation, different teams or departments, compliance, or scaling reasons. Previously, you needed to set up a separate data source in Grafana for each cluster. Now, with cross-cluster search, you can query data across all these clusters from a single Grafana data source. This makes it simpler and more convenient to query all of your Elasticsearch logs. You can learn more about the cross-cluster search feature in the Elasticsearch docs.
To take advantage of this functionality, it must be enabled in Elasticsearch (read the enablement docs) and in Grafana by turning on the elasticsearchCrossClusterSearch feature toggle.
To learn more, check out our plugin documentation.
Migration assistance to Grafana Cloud with the press of a button
Available in public preview in Grafana OSS and Grafana Enterprise
For those of you who are tired of running Grafana locally and want to move to the cloud, there’s good news. You can now migrate your Grafana OSS or Grafana Enterprise instance to Grafana Cloud in just a few clicks with the Grafana Cloud Migration Assistant.
With Grafana 11.5, we’ve added the ability to migrate any of the 100+ plugins in the Grafana plugins catalog using the Migration Assistant tool.
We’ve also made it possible to easily migrate your Grafana Alerting resources from your self-managed instance. Instead of manually migrating alerts individually, the Migration Assistant saves you time and makes it simple to copy your alerts to a Grafana Cloud instance within minutes.
Ready to make the move? Explore our docs to learn more about the Cloud Migration Assistant today and how to transition to Grafana Cloud.
Private Data Source Connect support for AWS data sources
Generally available in all editions of Grafana
With Private Data Source Connect (PDC), you can establish a private, secure connection between a Grafana Cloud instance, or stack, and data sources secured within a private network.
PDC is now supported across more AWS data source plugins, including:
- AWS Athena (Version 2.19.0)
- Amazon Aurora (Version 0.4.0)
- OpenSearch (Version 2.21.0)
- Amazon Redshift (Version 1.20.0)
- AWS X-Ray (Version 2.13.0)
So you can take advantage of the convenience and power of Grafana Cloud, even if your cluster is hosted in a virtual private cloud (VPC) or another private network.
You can check out our full list of supported data source plugins for PDC.
Grafana Alerting: RBAC updates
RBAC for notification policies
Generally available in all editions of Grafana
Manage notification policies through Role-Based Access Control (RBAC). Choose who can create, edit, and read notification policies using fixed roles.
You can only grant different access levels to the entire notification policy tree; not to individual notification policies.
RBAC for alerting notifications
Generally available in all editions of Grafana
The feature flag alertingApiServer is now enabled by default.
In the UI, administrators have more granular control over which parts of notification settings users have access to.
Enterprise users can leverage new RBAC permissions and OSS users can manage access to contact points via managed roles.
Learn more about Grafana
For an in-depth list of all the new features in Grafana, check out our Grafana documentation, the Grafana changelog, or our What’s New documentation.
Join the Grafana Labs community
We invite you to engage with the Grafana Labs community forums. Share your experiences with the new features, discuss best practices, and explore creative ways to integrate these updates into your workflows. Your insights and use cases are invaluable in enriching the Grafana ecosystem.
Upgrade to Grafana 11.5
Download Grafana 11.5 today or experience all the latest features by signing up for Grafana Cloud, which offers an actually useful forever-free tier and plans for every use case. Sign up for a free Grafana Cloud account today.
Our Grafana upgrade guide also provides step-by-step instructions for those looking to upgrade from an earlier version to ensure a smooth transition.
A special thanks to our community
We extend our heartfelt gratitude to the Grafana community!
Your contributions, ranging from pull requests to valuable feedback, are crucial in continually enhancing Grafana. And your enthusiasm and dedication inspire us at Grafana Labs to persistently innovate and elevate the Grafana platform.
Grafana Cloud is the easiest way to get started with metrics, logs, traces, dashboards, and more. We have a generous forever-free tier and plans for every use case. Sign up for free now!
