Urge GrafanaLabs to Migrate Flowcharting Plugin from Angular to React to keep the plugin alive

Grafana Plugin Development
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We created petition Petition · Urge GrafanaLabs to Migrate Flowcharting Plugin from Angular to React · Change.org
Petition is as below:
As a dedicated member of the Grafana community, I have greatly benefited from the open-source Flowcharting plugin. This powerful tool has become indispensable to our operations, offering functionalities that are not available in any other Grafana plugin. However, with Angular no longer being supported in new releases of Grafana and the original project owner no longer active, the future of this valuable resource is uncertain.

The Flowcharting plugin offers unique features that are not available in the Canvas plugin, such as the ability to create complex flowcharts and diagrams with live data integration.

The Flowcharting plugin is also more customizable and flexible than Canvas, allowing users to create highly tailored visualizations that meet their specific needs.However, with Angular no longer being supported in new releases of Grafana, the Flowcharting plugin risks becoming obsolete.

This would be a significant loss for many users who rely heavily on it for their work.We believe that there is an opportunity for GrafanaLabs to step in and preserve this valuable resource. By adopting the project and migrating it from Angular to React - which is supported by new releases - they could ensure its continued existence while also enhancing their own suite of tools.

This petition calls upon GrafanaLabs to adopt the Flowcharting plugin and transition it from Angular to React. This would not only preserve the plugin but also enhance its functionality and ensure its availability for all those who depend on it. We urge you as fellow members of our community who understand the importance of this resource to sign this petition.

Additionally, we request that GrafanaLabs consider adding the unique features of the Flowcharting plugin to the Canvas plugin, such as live data integration and enhanced customization options.

This would provide users with an even more powerful and versatile tool for data visualization.Together, we can ensure that Flowcharting remains a viable and valuable tool for the Grafana community, while also enhancing the functionality of the Canvas plugin.

Here are the links you provided, for reference:

I hope someone can help as this plugin is much better than canvas and we use it for monitoring prod. Already 15 signed the petition in two days and comment from people interested

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@soussif Good call! I got a lot of questions and requests to support Flowcharting plugin. Native Canvas should be a replacement, but it’s far away from the Flowcharting panel capabilities.

Let’s see what happens next.

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Great @soussif, petition signed, Flowcharting is still widely used by the community, Canvas is a great plugin but in many cases it cannot replace Flowcharting.

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or use Dynamic Text plugin pointing to external cdn flowchart.js

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@soussif Welcome to the community!

Well, first things first, I don’t think that change.org would do much… What would be great is for you open a issue on Issues · grafana/grafana · GitHub and ask in the issue for it to be addressed/labeled to canvas team (like the ones on the label “area/panel/canvas” https://github.com/grafana/grafana/labels/area%2Fpanel%2Fcanvas) .

Canvas is currently the “de facto” visual plug-in for Grafana, and would be great if the team behind it could consider implementing the backend or work towards something using jgraph and drawio like Flowcharting did.

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I think both options are valid, grafana labs

  • on the short term migrate the code of an open source tool that has an interest from the community because of an upgrade
  • and long term implement the missing features from the supported plugin.

I m not sure about the amount of work but I would like them to consider and asses at least.

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Hey @isaqueprofeta ,
i created issue Canvas: Request flowcharting features to be implemented/migrated into canvas plugin · Issue #79874 · grafana/grafana · GitHub
i hope this helps
Cheers
Faek

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Hi @here,

Thank you for creating this well detailed post :+1:

I am also adding @nathanmarrs who knows Canvas Plugin and might be able to give us some more information.

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Hello @isaqueprofeta , hello @all,
I can only support this. The use of flowcharts is existentail for our work. We are currently in the process of updating our Grafana environment. As a result, we realised that the Flowcharts plugin will no longer be supported in the future. Which is really a bit of a nightmare. I then tried to implement the existing flows in Canvas. Unfortunately, I failed. Canvas does not allow you to define different limits for different elements. This is not innovative in my opinion and is therefore unusable for us. It would be really good if a remedy could be found here. We don’t really care in which direction it goes. Whether it is the implementation of Flowcharts in the new environment or Canvas is further developed so that features comparable to those in Flowcharts are available. That would be really great if further developments were made here. If there is no remedy here, then it will be difficult to upgrade.
Thank you in advance

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If all else fails try this

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FYI, there is now another community plugin based off React Functional Components for flowcharts called the Flow panel: Flow plugin for Grafana | Grafana Labs

It has a lot of overlap with the flowcharting panel (also uses draw.io) so may be another way forward for people whilst Canvas continues to mature.

1 Like