Annotate standard dashboards

A dashboard annotation marks a specific point in time on a Chronosphere Observability Platform standard dashboard. Use annotations to record context that other telemetry doesn’t capture, such as a manual configuration change, a customer escalation, or the start of an incident. Anyone viewing the dashboard then sees what happened and when. Annotations belong to the dashboard where you create them. Each annotation stores a title, a timestamp, and optional labels. Any user with access to the dashboard can view, edit, or delete it.

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Annotations compared to change events

Dashboard annotations and change events both appear as markers on dashboard panels, but they’re separate features.

• Dashboard annotations are attached to a single dashboard. Create and manage them from the dashboard itself. An annotation has a title, a timestamp, and labels.
• Change events represent activity across Observability Platform, such as deploys, alerts, or infrastructure changes. Each change event has a category, source, and type, and can appear on dashboards, service pages, and in Changes Explorer. To display change events on a dashboard, see Enable change events on dashboards.

Choose an annotation when you want to mark a moment on one dashboard. Choose a change event when you want to track an occurrence across Observability Platform.

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Create an annotation

Create an annotation from a time series chart on a standard dashboard. Annotations created this way apply to the whole dashboard, not to a single panel. To create an annotation:

1. On a time series chart, click a data point to pin that point in time.
2. In the pinned tooltip, click Create annotation.
3. In the Create Annotation drawer, enter a Title that describes the annotation. The title accepts up to 100 characters.
4. Confirm the Timestamp. This field defaults to the pinned time. Set a time within seven days before or after the current time.
5. Optional: Add labels to categorize the annotation. For each label, enter a Key and a Value. To add another label, click Add Label. To remove a label, click the trash can. For label limits, see Labels.
6. Click Create to add the annotation.

The annotation appears as a marker on the dashboard’s panels at the timestamp you set.

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View annotations

Annotations appear as markers on a dashboard’s time series panels through a built-in Annotations event layer. Toggle the Annotations layer to show or hide annotation markers alongside other event layers. When several annotations share the same timestamp, Observability Platform groups them into a single marker that shows the number of annotations. Select the grouped marker, then click View all annotations to open the annotation group and select an individual annotation. To view the details of a single annotation:

1. Click the annotation marker on the panel.
2. Click View annotation details. The Annotation drawer opens to the Summary tab, which shows the title, timestamp, and labels.

To discuss an annotation with your team, open the annotation and select the Comments tab.

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Edit an annotation

1. Open the annotation details.
2. In the Annotation drawer, click Edit.
3. Update the title, timestamp, or labels.
4. Click Save to update the annotation.

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Delete an annotation

1. Open the annotation details.
2. In the Annotation drawer, click Edit.
3. Click Delete annotation.
4. In the confirmation dialog, click Delete.

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Labels

Labels are optional key-value pairs that categorize an annotation. The following limits apply to annotation labels:

• An annotation can have up to 50 labels.
• A label key accepts up to 200 characters. A label value accepts up to 500 characters.
• A label key can’t start with __.
• A label key or value can’t contain any of these characters: : = ~ ! * ?.

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Manage annotations with the API

Manage dashboard annotations programmatically with the Panel Annotations API:

• CreatePanelAnnotation
• ListPanelAnnotation
• PutPanelAnnotation
• DeletePanelAnnotation