Annotation not showing at the correct time in time series visualization

[ab060787]

Hi,
I am having an issue showing my annotations extracted from an Infinity Datasource into my dashboard. I figure I am missing something, any help appreciated.

• What Grafana version and what operating system are you using?
  Grafana v11.4.0 (b58701869e)

• What are you trying to achieve?
  I have an infinity data source that allows me to query the latest pipeline jobs from Gitlab, in the explore panel I am able to get job status.
  I am trying to show annotations in my dashboard based on that Infinity data source.

• How are you trying to achieve it?
  I have added the annotation in my dashboard settings and the test does show a result, the string date is even automatically converted to my timezone:
  

  
  
  Default field string time format: 2025-02-05T15:24:01.798Z
  

• What happened?
  Whatever the time range selected, the annotation shows in the bottom left corner of my graph, although when hovering it I can see the date seems correct and has the same format as when I hover on my graph:
  

  

• What did you expect to happen?
  I was expecting the annotation to show in my timeseries dashboard at the correct time.

• Did you receive any errors in the Grafana UI or in related logs?
  No

• Did you follow any online instructions? If so, what is the URL?
  Annotations | Grafana Plugins documentation

Thanks for your help!

[rnbhomesk]

Same issue here on v11.2

[jangaraj]

Time in the annotation must be in the UTC timezone. But dashboard shows data/annotations in different timezone. By default it’s a browser timezone.
So annotation with time 10:00:00 UTC, can be placed at 11:00:00 when browser is in the CET timezone.

[chenhaojie]

Whatever the time range selected, the annotation shows in the bottom left corner of my graph

[blueswen]

The time and end time fields must be time format with Unix Timestamps in milliseconds.

With Infinity data source, time fields could be formatted as Time with self defined columns, as shown in the examples below.

Sample data:

start_time,end_time,campaign_name
2025-07-05T08:00:00Z,2025-07-05T12:00:00Z,FB Summer Launch A
2025-07-05T10:00:00Z,2025-07-05T14:00:00Z,Search Boost B
2025-07-05T12:00:00Z,2025-07-05T16:00:00Z,Video Teaser C
2025-07-05T14:30:00Z,2025-07-05T18:30:00Z,IG Flash Sale D
2025-07-05T16:00:00Z,2025-07-05T20:00:00Z,Threads Trend Catch E

If the time is provided in ISO 8601 date string format (e.g., 2025-07-05T08:00:00Z), the annotation may display the correct time, but it will always appear stuck in the bottom-left corner of the panel and will not align correctly with the timeline.

Unacceptable Query Result for Annotations:

Acceptable Query Result After Using Correct Format: