Presenters

Source

Level Up Your Grafana Dashboards: A Deep Dive into New Filtering Features 🚀

Hey everyone! 👋 I’m Victor, a software engineer at Grafana Labs, and I’m thrilled to share some exciting updates we’ve been working on – specifically, a major overhaul of how you filter data within Grafana using Prometheus. We’ve focused on making your dashboards cleaner, more intuitive, and incredibly powerful. Let’s dive in! 💡

🎨 A Fresh, Streamlined UI – Goodbye Clutter!

First things first, we’ve completely redesigned the filter interface. We recognized that with many labels and complex selections, the old UI could become overwhelming. The new design is all about compactness and clarity.

  • Pill-Based Labels: Instead of sprawling lists, labels with multiple selections are now neatly organized into smaller, interactive “pills.” 💊
  • Hover Reveal: Need to see the full list of values for a label? Just hover – it’s instantly revealed! 🖱️
  • Improved Keyboard Accessibility: We’ve dramatically improved keyboard navigation. You can now cycle through labels, add, edit, or remove filters with ease – making it a truly accessible experience. ⌨️

⚙️ Dashboard Defaults: Set It and Forget It

Want to ensure certain filters are always present on your dashboards? Dashboard defaults are here to help! ⏰

  • JSON-Based Configuration: You can define default labels directly within your dashboard’s JSON model. 💾
  • Editable & Restorable: You can easily edit these defaults, revert to the original values, and manage them with a simple click. 🔄
  • No Removal Allowed: Important note: you can’t remove the label itself from the UI bar – it’s a core part of the default configuration.

📊 Group By Variable: Powerful Aggregation

Introducing the Group By Variable – a game-changer for data aggregation! 🤯

  • Dual Functionality: It works as both an ad-hoc filter and a default filter. 🤝
  • How it Works: The Group By variable takes the selected values and sends them to the Prometheus data source. Prometheus then executes queries, adds a by clause based on those values, and delivers the aggregated results. 🤖
  • Currently Behind a Toggle: This feature is currently in a feature toggle, but we’re planning to roll it out soon! 🚧

✨ Context-Aware Filter Suggestions: Smarter Filtering

We’ve taken filter suggestions to the next level with context-aware suggestions. 🎯

  • Leveraging Existing Filters: The Prometheus data source analyzes your existing filters and queries on the dashboard. 📡
  • Metric Name Extraction: It extracts the metric names from those queries.
  • Dynamic Filter Generation: It then combines these filters with the metric names to generate a relevant list of dimensions for the front end. 🤯

🚧 Not Applicable Filters: Clarity is Key

We’re tackling a common issue with not applicable filters. 👾

  • Visual Indication: These labels will now appear crossed out and grayed out, clearly indicating that they won’t apply to any of your queries. 🚫
  • Improved Visibility: This ensures you don’t waste time filtering by irrelevant dimensions.

🚀 Performance Boosts: Faster Results

We’re committed to making your dashboards as snappy as possible. 🦾

  • Optimized Dimension Retrieval: We’re focusing on performance optimizations, particularly when dealing with dimensions that have high cardality (many unique values). 💾
  • Batching Value Retrieval: We’re implementing batching to retrieve values more efficiently, resulting in faster results. ⚡️
  • Recent Filters & Recommended Filters: We’re also introducing Recent Filters (a history of your selections) and Recommended Filters (powered by a recommendation system) to streamline your workflow.

🌐 Per Panel Filtering: Filter Your World

Finally, we’re introducing Per Panel Filtering. 🌎

  • Dashboard-Wide Filtering: Select a label on any panel or series, and the entire dashboard will be filtered accordingly. 🤯

Try It Out! 💻

Ready to experience the new Grafana filtering features? Scan the QR code below to head to our Play Dashboard and start exploring! ➡️ [QR Code Link Here]

We’re incredibly excited about these improvements and believe they’ll significantly enhance your Grafana experience. Let us know what you think in the comments! 👇 #Grafana #Prometheus #DataVisualization #Monitoring #DevOps

Appendix