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Grafana Panels and Visualizations - Detailed Reference

What is a Panel?

A panel is the basic building block of a Grafana dashboard. Each panel combines:

A query (or multiple queries) to a data source
A visualization type to display the data
Field configuration (units, thresholds, color mappings)
Optional transformations to reshape the data before display

Panel Editor

Open the panel editor by clicking a panel's title > Edit, or clicking Add visualization for a new panel.

Panel Editor Layout

Top bar: Back to dashboard, Discard changes, Save dashboard

Center: Visualization preview (live update as you configure)

Toggle: "Table view" - shows raw query results as a table for debugging

Right sidebar tabs:

Query - configure data sources and write queries
Transform - apply data transformations
Alert - create alert rules from this panel
Below tabs: visualization-specific options and field config

Query Tab

Data source selector: Choose which data source to query
Query editor: Data-source-specific interface (PromQL for Prometheus, LogQL for Loki, SQL for databases)
Query options:
- Max data points: Limit data points fetched
- Min interval: Minimum auto-calculated interval
- Interval: Override the auto-calculated interval
- Relative time: Override dashboard time range for this panel only
- Time shift: Shift the time range (e.g., to compare to last week)
+ Query: Add multiple queries (labeled A, B, C...)
Expression: Add server-side math expressions combining query results

Visualization Types

Time Series (default)

Best for: Metrics over time, continuous data

Renders as lines, points, or bars
Supports multiple series
Configurable line width, fill, point size
Supports thresholds as colored background regions
Supports annotations overlay
Graph styles: Lines, Bars, Points; can mix per series
Stacking: None, Normal, 100%
Axis: Left Y, Right Y, hidden
Default visualization - supports alerting

Stat

Best for: Single important metric (KPI display)

Shows one or more values as large text
Supports sparkline background
Color modes: value, background, none
Can show last value, mean, sum, etc.
Great for dashboards that need quick status overviews

Bar Chart

Best for: Comparing categorical data

Horizontal or vertical orientation
Grouped or stacked
Supports labels on bars

Gauge

Best for: Showing a value relative to min/max range

Circular gauge with arc
Configurable thresholds set colors
Shows current value prominently

Bar Gauge

Best for: Multiple metrics as horizontal/vertical bars

Useful for comparing many items
Supports thresholds for color coding
Modes: gradient, retro LCD, basic

Table

Best for: Tabular data, multi-column metrics

Supports sorting by column
Column width customization
Cell display modes: color text, color background, gradient gauge
Pagination for large datasets
Can embed sparklines in cells

Heatmap

Best for: Distribution over time, histogram-over-time

X axis: time; Y axis: buckets; Color: density/value
Supports pre-bucketed data (Prometheus histogram) and raw values
Tooltip shows exact bucket counts

Histogram

Best for: Value distribution analysis

Groups values into buckets
Can combine multiple series
Configurable bucket size

Pie Chart

Best for: Proportional data, parts-of-whole

Pie or donut style
Labels: name, value, percentage

Logs

Best for: Log data from Loki, Elasticsearch, etc.

Displays raw log lines with timestamp
Log level coloring (info/warn/error)
Search/filter within results
Deduplication and time wrapping
Prettify JSON option

Traces

Best for: Distributed tracing visualization (Tempo)

Renders trace spans as a waterfall/Gantt chart
Shows service name, operation, duration
Click to drill into trace details

Flame Graph

Best for: CPU profiling data (Pyroscope)

Visualizes call stacks by CPU time
Click to zoom into subtrees

Node Graph

Best for: Service dependency maps, network topology

Renders nodes and edges
Node color/size configurable by metric

Geomap

Best for: Geographic data visualization

Layers: markers, heatmap, route
Multiple base map options (OpenStreetMap, CARTO, etc.)
Supports GeoJSON data

Canvas

Best for: Custom layouts, process diagrams, status boards

Drag-and-drop element placement
Elements: text, metric value, rectangle, ellipse, icon, image, connections
Dynamic data binding per element

State Timeline

Best for: State changes over time (on/off, OK/warn/crit)

Horizontal bands showing state duration
Each series = one row
Color per state value

Status History

Best for: Periodic state checks over time

Grid: Y=services, X=time buckets
Color per state

XY Chart

Best for: Correlation between two metrics

Scatter plot
X and Y axis from different fields
Bubble size from a third field

Candlestick

Best for: Financial OHLC data

Open/High/Low/Close representation
Volume bars

Text

Best for: Documentation panels, headers

Renders Markdown or HTML

Alert List

Best for: Dashboard overview of current alert states

Dashboard List

Best for: Navigation panels linking to other dashboards

Field Configuration (Standard Options)

Available for most visualizations under the visualization options panel.

Option	Description
Unit	Display unit (bytes, seconds, %, requests/sec, etc.)
Min / Max	Override auto-detected min/max for scales
Decimals	Number of decimal places
Display name	Override the series/field name
Color scheme	Fixed, thresholds-based, palette, etc.
No value	Text to display when value is null

Thresholds

Define color-coded boundaries:

Absolute: Fixed numeric values (e.g., >90 = red, >70 = yellow, else green)
Percentage: Relative to min/max

Example threshold config:

Base (default): Green
70: Yellow (warn)
90: Red (crit)

Value Mappings

Transform raw values into human-readable labels or colors:

Value to text: e.g., 1 -> "OK", 0 -> "Down"
Range to text: e.g., 0-50 -> "Low"
Regex to text: Match patterns

Data Links

Create clickable links from panel values:

Link to other dashboards with variable values interpolated
Link to external systems (e.g., Kibana, PagerDuty)
Use ${__value.raw} and ${__field.name} in URLs

Field Overrides

Apply specific field options to individual series/columns rather than all data:

Click + Add field override in the Overrides section
Choose override target:
- Fields with name (exact match)
- Fields with name matching regex
- Fields with type (number, string, time)
- Fields returned by query (A, B, C...)
Add properties to override (unit, color, alias, thresholds, etc.)

Example: In a table with columns cpu_idle and cpu_used, set cpu_used to show as percentage and color by threshold while leaving cpu_idle with default styling.

Transformations

Transformations reshape query data before rendering. Apply multiple in sequence.

Access: Panel editor > Transform tab > Add transformation

Most-Used Transformations

Transformation	Description
Reduce	Collapse a time series to a single value (last, mean, sum, max, min)
Filter by name	Keep only specific fields/columns
Filter by value	Filter rows where a field matches a condition
Organize fields	Rename, reorder, or hide fields
Merge	Combine multiple query results into one table
Join by field	SQL-style join on a common field (e.g., time)
Group by	Group rows and aggregate (count, sum, mean, etc.)
Sort by	Sort rows by a field
Limit	Keep only first N rows
Add field from calculation	Add a new column computed from existing columns
Convert field type	Change a field's data type
Rename by regex	Batch rename fields using regex
Extract fields	Parse JSON or regex from a string field
Labels to fields	Convert label key/values into separate columns
Rows to fields	Pivot: turn row values into column headers
Prepare time series	Normalize time series format
Time series to table	Convert time series format to table format

Enable "Debug" toggle on any transformation to see input/output for troubleshooting.

Query Options

Multiple queries

Add multiple queries (A, B, C...) to one panel. They are overlaid in the visualization. Use this to compare metrics or show multiple services on one graph.

Expressions (server-side)

Server-side expressions allow math across query results:

Math: $A + $B, $A / $B * 100
Reduce: Collapse a series to scalar
Resample: Change time resolution of a series
Classic conditions: Threshold logic (used in alerting)

Example - calculate error rate as percentage:

Query A: total_requests{job="api"}
Query B: error_requests{job="api"}
Expression C (Math): $B / $A * 100
Display C as percentage

Important query variables

These variables are available in queries:

Variable	Description
`$__interval`	Auto-calculated interval based on time range and resolution
`$__rate_interval`	Interval suitable for rate() functions (at least 4x scrape interval)
`$__from`	Start of the current time range (ms epoch)
`$__to`	End of the current time range (ms epoch)
`$__range`	Duration of current time range (e.g., "6h")
`$__range_s`	Duration in seconds
`$__range_ms`	Duration in milliseconds

Example PromQL using interval variable:

rate(http_requests_total[${__rate_interval}])

Panel Inspect

Click panel menu (3-dot) > Inspect to access:

Data: Raw table view of the data powering the panel
Stats: Query performance (time, row count)
JSON: Panel JSON model
Query: Equivalent of query inspector showing raw query and response

Performance Tips

Limit max data points to avoid over-fetching
Use recording rules in Prometheus for expensive queries
Set longer min intervals for historical dashboards
Use $__interval variable in queries to align with time resolution
Use $__rate_interval instead of hardcoded intervals for rate() queries
Avoid too many panels on one dashboard (aim for <20)

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