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Important: This documentation is about an older version. It's relevant only to the release noted, many of the features and functions have been updated or replaced. Please view the current version.

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Grafana Cloud Enterprise Open source

Modify dashboard settings

The dashboard settings page allows you to:

  • Edit general dashboard properties, including time settings
  • Add annotation queries
  • Add dashboard variables
  • Add links
  • View the dashboard JSON model

To access the dashboard setting page:

  1. Open a dashboard in edit mode.
  2. Click Dashboard settings (gear icon) located at the top of the page.

Modify dashboard time settings

Adjust dashboard time settings when you want to change the dashboard timezone, the local browser time, and specify auto-refresh time intervals.

  1. On the Dashboard settings page, click General.

  2. Navigate to the Time Options section.

  3. Specify time settings as follows.

    • Timezone: Specify the local time zone of the service or system that you are monitoring. This can be helpful when monitoring a system or service that operates across several time zones.
      • Default: Grafana uses the default selected time zone for the user profile, team, or organization. If no time zone is specified for the user profile, a team the user is a member of, or the organization, then Grafana uses the local browser time.
      • Local browser time: The time zone configured for the viewing user browser is used. This is usually the same time zone as set on the computer.
      • Standard ISO 8601 time zones, including UTC.
    • Auto-refresh: Customize the options displayed for relative time and the auto-refresh options Entries are comma separated and accept any valid time unit.
    • Now delay: Override the now time by entering a time delay. Use this option to accommodate known delays in data aggregation to avoid null values.
    • Hide time picker: Select this option if you do not want Grafana to display the time picker.

Add tags

You can add metadata to your dashboards using tags. Tags also give you the ability to filter the list of dashboards.

Tags can be up to 50 characters long, including spaces.

To add tags to a dashboard, follow these steps:

  1. On the Dashboard settings page, scroll down to the Tags section.

  2. In the field, enter a new or existing tag.

    If you’re entering an existing tag, make sure that you spell it the same way or a new tag is created.

  3. Click Add or press the Enter key.

  4. Save the dashboard.

When you’re on the Dashboards page, any tags you’ve entered show up under the Tags column.

Add an annotation query

An annotation query is a query that queries for events. These events can be visualized in graphs across the dashboard as vertical lines along with a small icon you can hover over to see the event information.

  1. On the Dashboard settings page, click Annotations.
  2. Click Add annotation query.
  3. Enter a name and select a data source.
  4. Complete the rest of the form to build a query and annotation.

The query editor UI changes based on the data source you select. Refer to the Data source documentation for details on how to construct a query.

Add a variable

Variables enable you to create more interactive and dynamic dashboards. Instead of hard-coding things like server, application, and sensor names in your metric queries, you can use variables in their place. Variables are displayed as dropdown lists at the top of the dashboard. These dropdowns make it easy to change the data being displayed in your dashboard.

For more information about variables, refer to Variables.

  1. On the Dashboard settings page, click Variable in the left side section menu and then the Add variable button.

  2. In the General section, the name of the variable. This is the name that you will later use in queries.

  3. Select a variable Type.

    Note: The variable type you select impacts which fields you populate on the page.

  4. Define the variable and click Update.

Dashboard links enable you to place links to other dashboards and web sites directly below the dashboard header. Links provide for easy navigation to other, related dashboards and content.

  1. On the Dashboard settings page, click Links in the left side section menu and then the Add link button.
  2. Enter title and in the Type field, select Dashboard or Link.
  3. To add a dashboard link: a. Add an optional tag. Tags are useful creating a dynamic dropdown of dashboards that all have a specific tag. b. Select any of the dashboard link Options. c. Click Apply.
  4. To add a link: a. Add a URL and tooltip text that appears when the user hovers over the link. b. Select an icon that appears next to the link. c. Select any of the dashboard link Options.

View dashboard JSON model

A dashboard in Grafana is represented by a JSON object, which stores metadata of its dashboard. Dashboard metadata includes dashboard properties, metadata from panels, template variables, panel queries, and so on.

To view a dashboard JSON model, on the Dashboard settings page, click JSON.

For more information about the JSON fields, refer to JSON fields.