Stop juggling dashboards with grouping-level variables
Stop juggling dashboards with grouping-level variables
If your dashboard includes both an API gateway and a database, changing something like an $instance variable affects all panels at once. To avoid this, you might have to split up services across separate dashboards, which defeats the goal of having a unified view.
Grouping-level variables address this by letting each row or tab have its own independent filters. For example, an API gateway row can use one set of instances, while a database row uses another within the same dashboard, while sharing the same time range. The underlying dashboard remains unchanged unless you choose to add grouping-level variables.
You can add variables directly to any row or tab. Panels in that section resolve grouping-level variables first, then fall back to dashboard-level variables, while panels in other sections remain unaffected.
The panel query editor’s autocomplete is context-aware, showing only the variables available to the panel you’re editing. Also, grouping-level variables carry over when converting between row and tab layouts, and work with repeating rows and tabs.
For more details, refer to the grouping-level variables documentation.
This feature will be rolled out to Grafana Cloud stacks over the next few weeks. To try it out in self-managed Grafana, enable the dashboardSectionVariables feature toggle.
