Dashboards

Overview

A dashboard is Datadog’s tool for visually tracking, analyzing, and displaying key performance metrics, which enable you to monitor the health of your infrastructure.

Note: View Dashboards with the Datadog Mobile App, available on the Apple App Store and Google Play Store.

New dashboard

To create a dashboard, click +New Dashboard on the Dashboard List page or New Dashboard from the navigation menu. Enter a dashboard name and choose a layout option.

Dashboards

Dashboards are on a grid-based layout, which can include a variety of objects such as images, graphs, and logs. They are commonly used as status boards or storytelling views which update in realtime, and can represent fixed points in the past. They have a maximum width of 12 grid squares and also work well for debugging.

Timeboards

Timeboards have automatic layouts, and represent a single point in time—either fixed or real-time—across the entire dashboard. They are commonly used for troubleshooting, correlation, and general data exploration.

Screenboards

Screenboards are dashboards with free-form layouts which can include a variety of objects such as images, graphs, and logs. They are commonly used as status boards or storytelling views that update in real-time or represent fixed points in the past.

Configuring dashboards

Graph menu

Click on any dashboard graph to open an options menu:

Global time selector

To use the global time selector, at least one time-based widget must be set to use Global Time. Make the selection in the widget editor under Set display preferences, or add a widget (global time is the default time setting).

The global time selector sets the same time frame for all widgets using the Global Time option on the same dashboard. Select a moving window in the past (for example, Past 1 Hour or Past 1 Day) or a fixed period with the Select from calendar… option or enter a custom time frame. If a moving window is chosen, the widgets are updated to move along with the time window.

Widgets not linked to global time show the data for their local time frame as applied to the global window. For example, if the global time selector is set to January 1, 2019 through January 2, 2019, a widget set with the local time frame for Past 1 Minute shows the last minute of January 2, 2019 from 11:59 pm.

Refresh rate

The refresh rate of a private dashboard depends on the time frame you are viewing. The shorter the time frame is, the more frequently the data is refreshed. Publicly shared dashboards refresh every thirty seconds, regardless of the selected time frame.

TV mode

Dashboards are useful for displaying key performance metrics on large screens or TVs. To enable TV mode, use the keyboard shortcut F or click the TV icon on the dashboard.

Settings

Version history

From a dashboard, click on the settings icon and then click the version history option to open the Version History side panel. You can preview, restore, or clone your dashboard’s version history. For more information, see the Version History guide.

Generate public URL

Share a dashboard with external users by generating a public URL. For more details, see Sharing dashboards.

Display UTC time

Toggle between UTC time and your default time zone.

Notifications

If notifications are activated for a dashboard, an event is created in the Events Explorer. This event provides information on text changes, widget changes, dashboard cloning, and dashboard deletion, along with the name of the user performing the action.

Additionally, individual users who activate the notification receive an email alert. Any user in the organization, regardless of administrative privileges, can sign up to receive change notifications for a dashboard.

Change events for dashboards with notifications enabled are seen in the event explorer by searching:

tags:audit,dash

To limit the search to a specific dashboard, include the dashboard’s name in the search.

Permissions

Use granular access controls to limit the roles that may edit a particular dashboard:

1. While viewing a dashboard, click on the cog in the upper right. The settings menu opens.
2. Select Permissions.
3. Click Restrict Access.
4. The dialog box updates to show that members of your organization have Viewer access by default.
5. Use the dropdown to select one or more roles, teams, or users that may edit the dashboard.
6. Click Add.
7. The dialog box updates to show that the role you selected has the Editor permission.
8. Click Save

Note: To maintain your edit access to the dashboard, the system requires you to include at least one role that you are a member of before saving. For more information about roles, see the RBAC documentation.

To restore general access to a dashboard with restricted access, follow the steps below:

1. While viewing the dashboard, click on the cog in the upper right. The settings menu opens.
2. Select Permissions.
3. Click Restore Full Access.
4. Click Save.

If the dashboard was created with the deprecated “read only” setting, the access control list pre-populates with a list of roles that have the Access Management (user_access_manage) permission.

If you manage your dashboards with Terraform, you can use the latest version of the Datadog Terraform provider to control which roles can edit your dashboards. For more information, see the Terraform Dashboard role restriction guide.

The access indicator appears at the top right of each edit-restricted dashboard. Depending on your permissions, it may say Gain Edit Access or Request Edit Access. Click the access indicator to understand your access permissions and what steps to take to edit the dashboard.

High-density mode

High-density mode displays group widgets in a dashboard side-by-side for increased widget density. This mode turns on by default on large screens for dashboards that use group widgets.

Select Increase density on wide screens to expand widgets to the width of the screen.

Clone dashboard

Use this option to copy the entire dashboard to a new dashboard. You are prompted to name the clone.

Copy, import, or export dashboard JSON

From an individual dashboard, copy, import, or export a dashboard’s JSON using the export icon (upper right) with the following options:

Delete dashboard

Use this option to permanently delete your dashboard. You are prompted to confirm deletion.

Dashboard details

From an individual dashboard, hover over the dashboard title to view and edit dashboard details. A popover panel opens.

Under the title, the avatar tells you who created the dashboard.

Suggested dashboards

From an individual dashboard, Datadog offers suggestions for viewing related dashboards. These dashboards are recommended based on the user activity in your organization and how often users go from this dashboard to other existing dashboards.

To add a suggested dashboards list, add [[suggested_dashboards]] inside the dashboard description.

Edit details

Update Markdown-supported dashboard descriptions or associate teams with a dashboard:

1. Open the dashboard you wish to edit.
2. Hover the dashboard title. A dropdown panel opens.
3. Click on the dashboard title or description to edit them.
4. Once done editing click the done button.
5. Select up to 5 teams from the Teams dropdown.

Dashboard list

Search, view, or create dashboards and lists on the Dashboard List page.

Teams

Use the My Teams toggle to switch between viewing all dashboards and only dashboards owned by your teams.

To edit the teams associated with one or more dashboards, take the following steps:

1. Select the checkbox next to each dashboard you wish to modify.
2. Open the Edit Teams dropdown in the upper right.
3. Use the checkboxes to select the appropriate teams for the dashboards.
4. Click Apply Changes.

New list

To create a dashboard list, click on the New List + button in the upper right.

The list’s title is automatically set with the user’s first name. For example, if John Doe creates a dashboard, the default title is John's list. To change a list’s title, click on the title for the text to become editable.

To add dashboards to a list, select their corresponding check boxes in the main Dashboard list. Then click on the Add to List button in the upper right corner of the Dashboard list:

Lists

The left sidebar displays favorite, preset, and shared, editable lists. You can hide this sidebar using the Hide Controls link.

Favorite lists

Favorite lists are dashboard lists starred by the current logged in user. Note: If you have no starred lists, the Favorite Lists category is hidden.

Preset lists

Preset lists are default dashboard lists in Datadog:

Restore deleted Dashboards

Use the preset Recently Deleted list to restore deleted dashboards. From the list, select all dashboards to restore and click Restore to. Select a specific list to restore the dashboards to, or select All Custom to restore them without a custom list. Dashboards in Recently Deleted are permanently deleted after 30 days.

Shared, editable lists

This section displays shared, editable dashboard lists with the number of dashboards in each list.

All dashboards

All dashboards listed are sortable using the column headers Star, Name, Modified, and Popularity. All columns with descriptions are listed below:

Popularity

An organization’s most popular dashboard displays five popularity bars. All other dashboards are relative to this dashboard. Popularity is based on the amount of traffic a dashboard receives. Popularity is updated daily; new dashboards have zero popularity bars for up to 24 hours.

Note: Traffic to public dashboard URLs is ignored for popularity.

Viewing dashboards on mobile devices

The Datadog Mobile App, available on the Apple App Store and Google Play Store, enables you to view your dashboards in a mobile-friendly format.

On the Dashboards page, you can view and search all of your dashboards, and filter them using the same template variables you have set up in the Datadog web app. Quickly filter your dashboards using template variable saved views. For more information about template variable saved views, see Dashboard Saved Views. Click on an individual dashboard to view it.

Note: To set up or edit a dashboard, you must log in to the Datadog browser UI.

Creating mobile home screen dashboards

The Datadog Mobile App, available on the Apple App Store and Google Play Store, also comes equipped with mobile home screen widgets. These widgets enable you to monitor service health and infrastructure without having to open the mobile app.

You can add SLOs, Monitors, and Open Incidents widgets to your mobile home screen alongside other development and collaboration tools to optimize your triage and incident management workflows.

Further Reading

Additional helpful documentation, links, and articles:

Check out the latest Datadog Dashboards releases! (App login required).RELEASE NOTES Enhance your Dashboards with Template VariablesDOCUMENTATION Use associated template variables to refine your dashboardsBLOG Share your Graphs outside of DatadogDOCUMENTATION Discover all available Widgets for your DashboardDOCUMENTATION View your Dashboards on the Mobile AppDOCUMENTATION Add Dashboard widgets to your clipboardBLOG The new Datadog dashboards experienceBLOG Create great integration dashboardsDEVELOPER DOCS Join an interactive session on better visualizations with DashboardsFOUNDATION ENABLEMENT