dashboarding

Grafana Dashboard Authoring

Dashboards are JSON documents stored in Grafana. Every dashboard has panels, variables, time range, and refresh settings. Understanding the JSON schema lets you programmatically create and modify dashboards via the API or Grafana Assistant tools.

Dashboard JSON structure

{
  "title": "My Dashboard",
  "uid": "my-dashboard-v1",
  "tags": ["service", "production"],
  "time": { "from": "now-1h", "to": "now" },
  "refresh": "30s",
  "timezone": "browser",
  "schemaVersion": 41,
  "templating": { "list": [] },
  "annotations": { "list": [] },
  "panels": []
}

Key fields:

• uid - stable identifier used in URLs and API calls; keep it short and meaningful
• schemaVersion - use 41 for Grafana 11+
• time.from / to - supports relative (now-1h, now-7d) and absolute ISO timestamps
• refresh - auto-refresh interval ("30s", "1m", "5m", "" for off)

Panel types and when to use them

Panel JSON structure

{
  "id": 1,
  "type": "timeseries",
  "title": "Request Rate",
  "gridPos": { "x": 0, "y": 0, "w": 12, "h": 8 },
  "datasource": { "type": "prometheus", "uid": "${datasource}" },
  "targets": [
    {
      "expr": "sum(rate(http_requests_total{job=\"$job\"}[5m])) by (status_code)",
      "legendFormat": "{{status_code}}",
      "refId": "A"
    }
  ],
  "fieldConfig": {
    "defaults": {
      "unit": "reqps",
      "thresholds": {
        "mode": "absolute",
        "steps": [
          { "color": "green", "value": null },
          { "color": "yellow", "value": 1000 },
          { "color": "red", "value": 5000 }
        ]
      }
    },
    "overrides": []
  },
  "options": {
    "legend": { "calcs": ["mean", "max", "last"], "displayMode": "table", "placement": "bottom" },
    "tooltip": { "mode": "multi", "sort": "desc" }
  }
}