Grafana v9.0.x adds visual query builders for Prometheus and Loki, a redesigned navigation experience, and a more flexible Alerting module. Managed Service for Grafana provides powerful data visualization and analysis capabilities. These changes lower the barrier to writing queries, speed up dashboard discovery, and give you finer control over alert routing.
This topic covers key updates in Managed Service for Grafana v9.0.x. For the complete changelog, see the official Grafana v9.0 release notes.
| Feature | What changed |
|---|---|
| Query builders | Compose and learn PromQL and LogQL queries through a visual interface instead of writing raw syntax. |
| Navigation | Expandable navigation bar, starred dashboards, and a keyboard-driven command palette. |
| Dashboard search | In-memory full-text indexing replaces SQL-based search, with panel title matching. |
| Explore | Turn Explore queries into panels or dashboards, and access a persistent query history. |
| Panels | Rebuilt heatmap panel, a new Traces panel, and dashboard previews. |
| Alerting | Redesigned alerting UI with alert state history, notification policies, and silences. |
Query builders for Prometheus and Loki
Writing PromQL and LogQL from scratch can be challenging, especially for users new to these query languages. Grafana v9.0.x adds visual query builders in Explore that help you compose, understand, and learn queries through a guided interface.
Three modes are available. Switching between them preserves your existing query:
Code -- Write queries as raw text. Best for experienced PromQL or LogQL users.
Builder -- Compose queries by selecting metrics, specifying labels, and adding operations through a visual interface.
Metric and label filters -- Search metrics by keyword, select a metric, and specify labels to filter the data.
Operations -- Click + Operation to add functions, range functions, aggregations, and binary operations.
Explain -- View a human-readable breakdown of how a query works. Use this mode to learn what each part of a Code or Builder query does.
Navigation and search
Expandable navigation bar
Expand the navigation bar to see all Grafana features and installed integrations at a glance.
Starred dashboards
Star frequently used dashboards to pin them in the Starred section of the navigation bar for quick access.
Command palette
Press Cmd+K on macOS or Ctrl+K on Linux and Windows to open the command palette. Search for commands in the palette for easier navigation.
Dashboard search
Dashboard search now uses an in-memory full-text index instead of SQL-based queries. Search results include panel title matches, making it faster to find specific content within dashboards.
Explore updates
Create panels and dashboards from Explore
In earlier versions, Explore was a one-way destination -- you could import panels and dashboards into Explore, but not the other way around. Grafana v9.0.x lets you turn any Explore query into a new panel or dashboard directly.
Query history
Click Query history to view all queries that have been run in Explore.
Panel updates
Heatmap panel
Significantly faster rendering performance
Higher resolution support
Custom and fine-grained control over the color spectrum
Traces panel
A dedicated Traces panel is now available. Create a traces visualization directly as a dashboard panel, without needing to query traces through Explore first.
Dashboard previews
When editing a panel, enter a query and open the Suggestions tab on the right side to preview all available dashboards. This helps you quickly find and reuse existing dashboards that visualize similar data.
Alerting
Grafana v9.0.x includes a redesigned alerting UI with better visibility into alert behavior and more flexibility in routing and silencing.
Alert state history
Alert state history tracks every status change along with the cause. The Alerting or OK state indicates that an error occurred during rule evaluation or no evaluation result was returned. State labels distinguish between different conditions:
| State | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Alerting | The alert condition is met. |
| Alerting (NoData) | No data was returned during evaluation. |
| Alerting (Error) | An error occurred during rule evaluation. |
Alert rule creation
Create alert rules in two ways:
From a panel -- Create an alert rule and associate it with a specific dashboard panel by configuring the Dashboard UID and Panel ID parameters.
Standalone -- Create an alert rule that is not tied to any dashboard.
Notification policies
Route alerts to the right contact points using notification policies. The Matching labels parameter associates alert rules with specific notification channels based on label values.
Silences
Create silences to temporarily suppress notifications that match specific criteria.
