Manage dashboards

On the Dashboards page, you can perform dashboard management tasks such as:

• Browsing and creating dashboard folders
• Managing folder permissions
• Adding generative AI features to dashboards

For more information about creating dashboards, refer to Build dashboards.

Browse dashboards

On the Dashboards page, you can browse and manage folders and dashboards. This includes the options to:

• Create folders and dashboards.
• Move dashboards between folders.
• Delete multiple dashboards and folders.
• Navigate to a folder.
• Manage folder permissions. For more information, refer to Dashboard permissions.

The page lists all the dashboards to which you have access, grouped into folders. Dashboards without a folder are displayed at the top level alongside folders.

Shared with me

The Shared with me section displays folders and dashboards that are directly shared with you. These folders and dashboards aren't shown in the main list because you don't have access to one or more of their parent folders.

If you have permission to view all folders, you won't see a Shared with me.

Create a dashboard folder

Folders help you organize and group dashboards, which is useful when you have many dashboards or multiple teams using the same Grafana instance.

Before you begin: Ensure you have organization Editor permissions or greater to create root level folders or Edit or Admin access to a parent folder to create subfolders. For more information about dashboard permissions, refer to Dashboard permissions.

To create a dashboard folder:

1. Click Dashboards in the primary menu.

2. Do one of the following:

   • On the Dashboards page, click New and select New folder in the drop-down.
   • Click an existing folder and on the folder’s page, click New and select New folder in the drop-down.

3. Enter a unique name.

   Folder names can't include underscores (_) or percentage signs (%), as it interferes with the search functionality.

   Also, alerts can't be placed in folders with slashes (\ /) in the name. If you want to place alerts in the folder, don't use slashes in the folder name.

4. Click Create

When you nest folders, you can do so up to four levels deep.

When you save a dashboard, you can optionally select a folder to save the dashboard in.

To edit the name of a folder:

1. Click Dashboards in the primary menu.
2. Navigate to the folder by selecting it in the list, or searching for it.
3. Click the Edit title icon (pencil) in the header and update the name of the folder.

The new folder name is automatically saved.

Folder permissions

You can assign permissions to a folder. Dashboards in the folder inherit any permissions that you've assigned to the folder. You can assign permissions to organization roles, teams, and users.

To modify permissions for a folder:

1. Click Dashboards in the primary menu.
2. Navigate to the folder by selecting it in the list, or searching for it.
3. On the folder's page, click Folder actions and select Manage permissions in the drop-down.
4. Update the permissions as desired.

Changes are saved automatically.

For more information about dashboard permissions, refer to Dashboard permissions.

Dashboard and folder deletion

Folders - When you delete folders, the action is immediate and can't be reversed.

Dashboards - Deleted dashboards are stored in the deletion history and can be restored if needed.

Restore deleted dashboards

When you delete dashboards, they’re stored in the deletion history for up to 12 months, allowing you to restore them if needed. The deletion history can contain a maximum of 1000 dashboards. After this limit is reached, the oldest deleted dashboards are permanently removed even if the 12-month expiration period isn't over yet.

You can access the list of deleted dashboards from the Dashboards page by clicking the Recently deleted button, or by navigating to Dashboards > Recently deleted.

{{% admonition type="note" %}} You can restore dashboards that you deleted. Users with admin rights can restore any dashboard. {{% /admonition %}}

To restore one or more dashboards, follow these steps:

1. In the main menu, click Dashboards > Recently deleted or click the Recently deleted button from the Dashboards page.
2. Select the dashboards you want to restore.
3. Click Restore and select a folder to which the dashboards will be moved:
   • If you select one dashboard and its original folder still exists, that folder is preselected.
   • If you select multiple dashboards from the same folder, that folder is preselected.
   • If you select dashboards from different folders, you’ll need to choose one target folder for all of them.
   • If the original folder no longer exists, you’ll need to select a new target folder.
4. Click Restore.

Limitations

Restoring dashboards has the following limitations:

• Permissions aren't preserved - Dashboard-specific permissions are not restored. After restoration, you'll need to manually reconfigure any custom permissions that were previously set on the dashboard.
• Folder-level permissions apply - Restored dashboards inherit the permissions of the target folder you select during restoration.
• Version history is reset - The dashboard's version history is not preserved. After restoration, the dashboard starts with version 1, and all previous versions are lost.

Set up generative AI features for dashboards

You can use generative AI to help you with the following tasks:

• Generate panel and dashboard titles and descriptions: Generate a title and description based on the data you’ve added for your panel or dashboard. This is useful when you want to visualize your data quickly and don’t want to spend time coming up with a title or description.
• Generate dashboard save changes summary: Generate a summary of the changes you’ve made to a dashboard when you save it. This is great for easily tracking the history of a dashboard.

To access these features, install and configure Grafana’s Large Language Model (LLM) app plugin. For more information, refer to the Grafana LLM plugin documentation.

When enabled, the ✨ Auto generate option displays next to the Title and Description fields in your panels and dashboards, or when you press the Save button.