Manage dashboard time ranges

Use a dashboard’s time range to analyze visualized data in multiple panels. You can define a refresh interval to control how frequently the dashboard updates panel data. You can also select a time range to view the same period across all of a dashboard’s panels to help you correlate events. You can also compare current data to past data to identify trends.

Set a dashboard’s refresh interval

To manually refresh a dashboard’s panels, click the Refresh button in the dashboard.

To set how often a dashboard refreshes its panels:

1. Click the refresh dropdown, which defaults to Off.
2. Click an interval in the list, or Off to disable automatic refreshing.

Define a dashboard’s time range

You can define a dashboard’s time range by using the time range selector, or by selecting part of a data visualization within a panel.

Define a dashboard’s time range with the time range selector

The time range selector is a dropdown menu and text-entry field that provides several ways to define a relative or absolute time range. For details about time ranges in Observability Platform and time range selector usage, see Select time ranges.

Select a dashboard’s time range from a panel

You can also define a time range by selecting it inside of a data visualization chart panel.

To select a time range:

1. In any of the dashboard’s chart visualizations, click the beginning or end point in time for the range you want to define.
2. Drag to the point at the other end of the time range. Chronosphere masks the area between in gray to visualize the range that you’ve selected.

Upon releasing the cursor, the dashboard updates all of its panels to display the selected time range.

Pin a time range

You can pin dashboard time ranges to the last selected interval, or to a relative time period. When a time range is pinned, all dashboards respect the pinned interval. This lets you review multiple dashboards while using the same time range, enabling comparison of the same time period.

1. In the time range selector, click the Pin icon.
2. Select a pin option:
   • Pin with absolute time range: Pins a specific time interval. If you’re viewing a dashboard and don’t want it to refresh, pin it.
   • Pin with relative time range: Pins the last selected interval. For example, if your time selector uses Last 30 minutes, the relative range is the last 30 minutes.

When a time range is pinned, the pin is green.

To unpin the time range, click the pin again.

Compare current data to past data

Comparison mode, sometimes called week-over-week view, is a Chronosphere feature that overlays historical data on your current data in dashboards. This feature provides additional context for comparing your current metrics with historical trends and expectations, or identifying recurring trends and outliers.

To compare current data to past data:

1. Click Compare.

2. Select a past period to overlay onto the dashboard’s panels.

   The Preceding period option overlays the immediately preceding period of the same length as the selected time range.

   An additional query runs to pull historical (“offset”) time series into your graph, which returns data with the same resolution as your current data.

   Depending on the time period you select and your data retention settings, the result might include a gap for your most recent data, such as the last 10 minutes.

   Chronosphere matches the current and historical data queries using tag logic, with _offset_:true on the offset query and _series_:series<num> on all of the series. This associates data from the offset time series to the current series for similar presentation, so the results in comparison mode contain labels that resemble __chrono_offset__: offset_7d1h or __chrono_series__: "series1".

For details, see the Chronosphere blog (opens in a new tab).

To disable the overlay, click Compare and select Off.