What Grafana version and what operating system are you using?
Grafana version: v12.3.1 (0d1a5b4420) — running as Enterprise (Free & unlicensed)
Self-hosted.
What are you trying to achieve?
We’re trying to build a dashboard panel using the Query Builder GUI, selecting specific columns from a table and applying filters based on column values.
How are you trying to achieve it?
Using the Query Builder (Builder mode, not Code/raw query mode) — selecting our data source, choosing the table mbe_blowers_i, then trying to select individual columns in the Column dropdown and add a filter under “Filter by column value.”
What happened?
The Column dropdown only shows a single literal * option instead of listing the table’s actual fields. The “Filter by column value” dropdown is also empty, so no column can be selected there either — meaning filters can’t be added via the GUI at all.
This first appeared in early August. At the time, clearing the browser cache / opening an incognito window temporarily resolved it, so we assumed it was a session/cache issue. However, it recurred the same day, and as of 21 August it’s happening consistently and is now affecting multiple users — so it doesn’t appear to be purely client-side/cache related.
What did you expect to happen?
The Column dropdown should list all available fields/columns from the selected table, allowing us to pick specific columns and build filters through the GUI as normal.
Did you receive any errors in the Grafana UI or in related logs? If so, please tell us exactly what they were.
No errors shown in the UI itself — the dropdown simply doesn’t populate.
Did you follow any online instructions? If so, what is the URL?
No — the data source and dashboards were set up internally by our team.
Database technology: InfluxDB 3.x — Cloud Dedicated. We’re using the SQL / Flight SQL query language (not InfluxQL or Flux).
To recap the issue for context: in the Query Builder, the Column dropdown only shows a literal * instead of listing the actual table’s fields, and the “Filter by column value” dropdown is similarly empty — so no filters can be added via the GUI.
Since you’re on InfluxDB 3.x Cloud Dedicated with SQL/FlightSQL, the first thing to check is whether Grafana can retrieve the table’s schema independently of the Builder UI.
Switch to Code mode and run →
sql
SHOW COLUMNS IN mbe_blowers_i
If that doesn’t return results, try →
sql
SELECT column_name
FROM information_schema.columns
WHERE table_name = 'mbe_blowers_i'
If this fails or doesn’t return the expected columns →
Check the credentials configured for the Grafana InfluxDB data source and confirm they have read access to the target database’s schema/metadata, not just its data. This points to an InfluxDB access issue rather than a Builder UI issue.
If this returns all the expected columns →
Then InfluxDB is exposing the schema correctly, while Builder mode is still unable to populate the column and filter dropdowns. That points toward a Grafana data-source/Builder issue rather than the table itself. In that case →
Check the Grafana server logs while selecting mbe_blowers_i in Builder mode for any InfluxDB/FlightSQL errors.
Workaround → use Code mode and write the query directly, using the actual column names from the SHOW COLUMNS output above →
sql
SELECT time, col1, col2
FROM mbe_blowers_i
WHERE $__timeFilter(time)
AND col1 = 'some_value'
ORDER BY time
Replace col1, col2 with your real column names and adjust the filter condition as needed. Keep $__timeFilter(time) so the panel respects the dashboard’s time range. This lets you build the panel now while the Builder issue is investigated.
Just to clarify the behaviour a bit: it’s not that the Builder never works — it does work correctly at times, then stops. Clearing cache/incognito fixed it temporarily the first time it happened, but it’s since become consistent and is now affecting multiple users, which is why we don’t think it’s schema/permissions related.
We’d really like to resolve this at the GUI level rather than switching to Code mode long-term, as our users rely on the Builder for day-to-day dashboard creation.
Given it’s intermittent-turned-consistent, could this point to something like a caching/session issue on the Grafana side itself (e.g. schema cache not refreshing), rather than InfluxDB permissions?
