Panel specific variables

[vascodorey]

• What Grafana version and what operating system are you using?

• Grafana v12.1.1 (df5de8219b), running on docker

• What are you trying to achieve?

• I am building a finance dashboard. I want to have variables physically placed in the panel, an example below:

• 

• How are you trying to achieve it?

• I do not know how to achieve this. I can create variables for the full dashboard, but these take a lot of space in the header of the page (e.g., I cannot see the actual dashboard in mobile devices - see screenshot below)

• 

• I may also have embedded dashboards with their own variables, but I am not sure on how to achieve this (I did not find any such panel type in visualisations)

• What happened?

• Not applicable

• What did you expect to happen?

• Not applicable

• Can you copy/paste the configuration(s) that you are having problems with?

• Not applicable

• Did you follow any online instructions? If so, what is the URL?

• Not applicable

[dawiddebowski]

Hi, as far as I know variables can be done only for entire dashboard. What you could do is:

1. create a variable that will be used only for specific panels (e.g. var1) and hide it from user’s view (show: Nothing in settings)
2. create a stat panel that will have all the options of var1
3. using data links, set the variable var1 value to the clicked stat

It’s somewhat cheating but you could have something that changes the variables next to the panel. I don’t think you could do any better in vanilla Grafana.

It could look something like this:

[vascodorey]

That might work, let me try it out!

[yosiasz]

how about the new tabs feature?

[vascodorey]

Thank you both for your help (this is an amazing community!).

@dawiddebowski - your solution works! Grafana has some limitations, for instance:

1. Multiple choice: let’s say I want to see the dashboard for var1 if var1=”A”, var1=”B” or var1=”C” (e.g., I would CTRL+Click “A” “B” and “C”) - I need to click each and append to the URL in the data link. This makes unsetting a variable difficult
2. The dashboard does not refresh (setting to 5s refresh helps, but 5s is still not immediately responsive)

@yosiasz - I don’t think I have this feature enabled. I can’t find the .ini files on my docker configs folder (as suggested on Configure feature toggles | Grafana documentation). The answer may be in my “docker run “ command. Could you provide any guidance?

Cheers,

[yosiasz]

I am not sure which one of these does it but here it is.

[feature_toggles]
enable=dashboardNewLayouts,kubernetesDashboards,dashboardScene,sqlExpressions

[vascodorey]

Thanks @yosiasz - I am running the new version and have the tabs!

How are you able to have different variables per tab (in the example you made: K*pto has “Legal Entities”, Investments has “Carteira”)?

[yosiasz]

Business Variable | Volkov Labs

using this plugin

[vascodorey]

Thanks, I’ll try it out

[vascodorey]

Works a charm! Thanks!

[yosiasz]

@vascodorey so how does it look like with tabs and all on mobile?

[vascodorey]

Looks beautiful! I need to tweak it, though (e.g., variables are displayed first - is there a way to make the business variables panel adjust its size according to the number of variables that exist?). I am still on the process of hiding variables, but I think I’ll manage it.

Cheers and have a nice weekend!

[yosiasz]

show us the results when done please. solution was shared with you, so sharing the final result will help others.

[vascodorey]

@yosiasz - it’s still a bit work in progress (I am intending to explore these volkov labs plugins to more extent), but here you go:

Here’s the desktop version:

Here is the mobile version:

Once again, thanks for your help!