Observe
Dashboards
Classic dashboards
Panels

Visualize dashboard contents with panels

Chart panels, also called panels, transform or filter the results of a query and visualize them.

For details about panels, see the Grafana documentation (opens in a new tab).

Add panels to a dashboard

To add a panel to a dashboard:

  1. Open the dashboard.
  2. Click the Add Panel icon, styled as a bar chart with a plus sign (+) icon.
  3. In the placeholder panel that appears, click Add new panel.

After adding your desired panels, click the Save dashboard button to save your changes.

Edit a panel

You can customize the features of each panel in your dashboards in its panel editor.

To access the panel editor:

  1. Click the panel's title to open its controls.
  2. Click Edit to open the panel editor.

From the panel editor, you can change a panel's query, visualization type, and data source.

Grafana provides many options and controls in the panel editor that aren't documented in this guide. For details, see the Grafana documentation (opens in a new tab).

Change a panel's type

A panel's type defines its visualization method. By default, a new panel is of the Graph type. For a list of core panel types, see the Grafana documentation (opens in a new tab).

To change the panel's type:

  1. Open the panel's editor.
  2. Click Show options.
  3. Select a type under the Visualizations section.
  4. Optional: Click Apply to save any panel type changes and exit the panel editor.

Change a panel's data source

A panel's data source defines what the panel queries for the data that it visualizes. By default, a new panel queries the Chronosphere Prometheus data source. If you're ingesting metrics from Graphite, change the data source to Chronosphere Graphite.

To change the panel's data source:

  1. Open the panel's editor.
  2. In the Query tab, click the data source dropdown.
  3. Select a data source.
  4. Optional: Click Apply to save any data source changes and exit the panel editor.

Change a panel's query

To populate the panel with data from the selected data source, you write queries in the panel editor's query editor. The query editor interface can change based on the panel's data source.

To change the query for the default Chronosphere Prometheus data source:

  1. Open the panel's editor.

  2. In the Query tab, enter PromQL expressions in the Query field.

    The visualization preview changes as you edit the query. If the query results in an error, a ! tab appears in the visualization preview's title bar that provides the error message when you hold the pointer over it.

  3. Optional: Customize the query's presentation by editing the fields beneath the query.

  4. Optional: Add additional queries by clicking the + Query button.

  5. Optional: Click Apply to save any query changes and exit the panel editor.

For details about writing queries, read the querying documentation.

Chronosphere also includes an interactive Query Builder that you can use to construct, optimize, and debug queries before saving, using, and sharing them with your team.

For details, see the Query Builder documentation.

The dashboard edit screen might suggest using a rate() function when querying metrics. However, Chronosphere recommends using rate() only with Counter panels.

Although this message is relevant only with Counter panels, it sometimes appears when editing Gauge panels. Grafana suggests using rate() based on the metric name and keywords, such as count and total, even when it's inappropriate for a panel type.

Also, be aware that the Grafana special variable $__rate_interval has unique behavior that might not be compatible with the Chronosphere Prometheus data source's scrape interval. Chronosphere recommends using a separate $interval variable instead.

Exit the panel editor

To save changes to a panel and exit the panel editor, click Apply.

To save changes to both the panel and dashboard, and then exit the panel editor, click Save.

To exit the panel editor without saving changes, click Discard.

Save changes to a dashboard

To save changes to a dashboard's panels and layout from the dashboard view:

  1. Click Save dashboard, represented by a disk icon.
  2. Optional: If you changed the dashboard's time range and want to save it as the default range, select Save current time range as dashboard default.
  3. Optional: In the Save dashboard dialog, describe the change.
  4. Click Save.
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