My understanding is that it did not use to work as I explained above. In this post: Time Range -> Override relative time - #3 by cezarolavo @ [danielgonzalez] says: “Isn’t a bug!! Is feature!!!”
But it seems that in version 7 it became a feature as someone said it in this post: Grafana 7 - Stat panel - Time of last point - #6 by nudelmann [anhhuy2591] writes: " I solved this by using Value “Last” and adding “relative time” (with value “5m” = last 5 minutes) to “Query options” since I want to display current/latest value only (regardless the selected time frame)."
It seems to me that at the moment, when setting a “Relative time” in the query options, it is “Relative” to the last date in the selected date range… and not to now.
Not sure what the current status is for version 8: feature or bug? Would be great if someone from Grafana can set our expectations in that regard and, if it is a feature, give us details on the required setup to make it work.
Thanks
Phil