Using template variable to populate annotation tag

tcl · September 9, 2021, 11:23am

What Grafana version and what operating system are you using?
8.1.2, Official Docker
What are you trying to achieve?
I am trying to use the current value of a template variable to populate the tag field of annotations.

Ideally, I would love to use it in key:value format, such as:

site_id:$site_id

How are you trying to achieve it?
I am using: $my_template_variable_name when defining tag in new annotations popup.
What happened?
It is treated as a string “$my_template_variable_name” instead of entering the variable value (e.g. 1234)
What did you expect to happen?
The tag is created using the value (e.g. 1234)
Can you copy/paste the configuration(s) that you are having problems with?
Did you receive any errors in the Grafana UI or in related logs? If so, please tell us exactly what they were.
No errors seen
Did you follow any online instructions? If so, what is the URL?

mattabrams · September 17, 2021, 1:29am

Hi @tcl

I believe that this is an ongoing feature request. Here is an issue with a lot of recent chatter:

github.com/grafana/grafana

Automatically add template variable as annotation tags

opened 09:55AM - 14 May 20 UTC

MattePalte

type/feature-request area/dashboard/templating area/annotations

**What would you like to be added**: These are the steps that I want to be able …to do: - Select a specific panel in my dashboard. This panel has multiple time series of different objects (ca 80 - 200), all of the same type, a sort of swarm. I have a template variable to select (with checkbox) which object (via a name identifier) that I want to visualise. - I select only one (or a subset) of those objects, because I want to add an annotation for them only. This annotation is representing an anomaly, it is an interval anomaly. - I want to be automatically add in the annotation's tags the identifier names of the objects. - Later I want to query all the anomalies on the specific object and see them in another dashboard. **Why is this needed**: it is useful because it can help in the very general task of annotating a time series dataset for the application of machine learning algorithms. This is a very crucial task in all the major industrial setting in which data are collected through sensor on many machine ( monitoring of health of train track, power plant, servers). In the use case I am working, we want to put in place a pipeline for annotating anomalies on hypervisors/servers, and this feature will help in making the annotation feature really usable and scalable in this scenarios. At the moment the only possible approach is that the annotator copy by hand the name identifier of the objects involved, that will require a lot more of (tedious) work that can be avoided by adding this simple feature. In addition, this feature links very well to the other feature that lets user query based on annotation that are represented in a template variable (https://grafana.com/docs/grafana/latest/reference/annotations/#query-by-tag). It will be very easy to retrieve all the annotation on a specific machine with anomaly. If you have alternative scalable approach please share it. Thanks in advance

system · September 9, 2022, 11:23am

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