content/shared/influxdb-v2/tools/notebooks/overview.md
Learn how notebooks can help to streamline and simplify your day-to-day business processes.
See an overview of notebook concepts, notebook controls, and notebook cell types also know as the basic building blocks of a notebook.
You can think of an InfluxDB notebook as a collection of sequential data processing steps. Each step is represented by a "cell" that performs an action such as querying, visualizing, processing, or writing data to your buckets. Notebooks help you do the following:
The following options appear at the top of each notebook.
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Select {{< caps >}}Run{{< /caps >}} (or press Control+Enter) to display results of each cell and write data to the selected bucket.
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Select {{< caps >}}Save Notebook{{< /caps >}} to save all notebook cells. Once you've saved the notebook, this button disappears and the notebook automatically saves as subsequent changes are made.
{{% note %}} Saving the notebook does not save cell results. When you open a saved notebook, click {{< caps >}}Run{{< /caps >}} to update cell results. {{% /note %}}
Click the timezone drop-down list to select a timezone to use for the notebook. Select either the local time (default) or UTC.
Select from the options in the dropdown list or select Custom Time Range to enter a custom time range with precision up to nanoseconds, and then click {{< caps >}}Apply Time Range{{< /caps >}}.
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To generate a URL for the notebook, click the {{< icon "share" >}} icon. For more detail, see how to share a notebook.
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The following cell types are available for your notebook:
At least one data source (input) cell is required in a notebook for other cells to run.
{{< caps >}}Query Builder{{< /caps >}}: Build a query with the Flux query builder.
{{< caps >}}Flux Script{{< /caps >}}: Enter a raw Flux script.
Data source cells work like the Query Builder or Script Editor in Data Explorer. For more information, see how to query data with Flux and the Data Explorer.