A custom dashboard is a personalized data visualization panel focused on system observability. You can use it to integrate, display, and analyze system observability data, to comprehensively understand the system status and quickly locate issues. This topic describes how to quickly start using custom dashboards.

Background

Custom dashboards enable users and teams to independently design and configure custom data visualization panels based on their specific needs, delivering intuitive data visualization. Based on integrated data from multiple sources, key information is displayed in formats such as time series charts, metric cards, pie charts, bar charts and tables. These dashboards support flexible adjustments to layout, data dimensions, and display styles, facilitating on-demand data visualization. The core features are as follows:

Multiple data sources: Supported types of data sources include Server-side Monitoring, VMP, Cloud Monitor, TLS, and Metrics. The three elements of observability and business data are covered.

Open ecosystem: Fully compatible with Grafana and Grafana JSON and supports exporting to GrafanaModel.

Prerequisites

The relevant monitoring services for data sources have been activated, and observability data can be obtained normally.

Procedure

Follow the steps below to quickly start using custom dashboards.

Step 1: Create a folder

Log in to the Observability Platform console, and in the left navigation bar, select Custom Dashboard.

On the dashboard management page, click Create Folder. Enter a name for the folder to manage dashboards.

Step 2: Create a dashboard

Currently, three methods are available for creating a dashboard. Choose the one that best fits your scenario and needs.

Directly create

JSON import

Copy dashboard

On the dashboard management page, click Create dashboard and select Directly create to create a new dashboard.

Parameter	Description
Name	Specify a name for the custom dashboard. The name must be unique.
Own folder	Select a folder to which the dashboard belongs to facilitate dashboard management.

Step 3: Add and edit charts

After creating the dashboard, you will be redirected to the dashboard configuration page. Click the Click to add chart option to add charts to the dashboard as needed. After configuration, click Save and Back dashboard in sequence. You can repeat this step to add multiple charts as needed.

Parameter	Description
Preview area	Chart preview (top-left): Displays a real-time preview of the chart based on your chart and data settings.
Chart settings	Chart settings (right): You can configure the appropriate chart type and chart configurations as needed. For details, see Chart settings.
Data settings	Data settings (bottom-left): This is where you configure the data source and how the data is presented as needed. For details, see Data query and Data conversion.

Step 4: Chart layout

Hover over the top of the chart until the cursor changes to a plus sign (+), and drag the chart to adjust its position. Hover over the bottom-right corner until the cursor changes to an arrow, then drag to scale the chart. Adjust the chart layout as needed. After configuration, click save and Quit editing in sequence.

Step 5: View the dashboard

After all configurations are complete, return to the dashboard page to view the data dashboard. You can customize the time range and refresh frequency, or manually refresh the data.

What to do next

When configuring data queries or query variables, you can use global variables for interpolation. For details, see Global variables.

After adding charts, you can group them to facilitate management. For more details, see Chart grouping.

For lifecycle management of custom dashboards and related resources, as well as other management operations, see Managing charts, Managing dashboards, and Managing folders.

Parameter	Description
JSON file	Click to upload a file, or drag and drop it directly. Currently, only JSON files under 10 MB can be uploaded. Currently, JSON files exported from this platform or from Grafana are supported.
Name	The name for the custom dashboard. The name cannot exceed 120 characters and must be unique.
Own folder	Select a folder to which the dashboard belongs to facilitate dashboard management.

Observability Platform