Project: Grafana (Observability and Analysis / Observability)
File: whats-new-in-v9-4.md

description: Learn about new and updated features in Grafana v9.4 keywords: grafana new documentation '9.4' release notes labels: products: cloud enterprise oss title: What's new in Grafana v9.4 weight: -35 Welcome to Grafana 9.4! Read on to learn about changes to search and navigation, dashboards and visualizations, and authentication and security. For even more detail about all the changes in this release, refer to the . We've made the following changes to search and navigation. Generally available in all editions of Grafana. The command palette has been updated to provide a more efficient way to navigate Grafana. You can now search and access all pages and recent dashboards, making it easier to perform tasks without taking your hands off the keyboard. To launch the command palette, use the keyboard shortcut `cmd + K` on Mac or `ctrl + K` on Linux/Windows. To learn more about the command palette, refer to . {{< figure src="/media/docs/grafana/screenshot-grafana-94-command-palette.png" max-width="750px" caption="Grafana command palette" >}} Generally available on Grafana Cloud, and available to preview using the `topnav` in all editions of Grafana. The navigation in Grafana has been updated with a new design and an improved structure to make it easier for you to access the data you need. With this update, you'll be able to quickly navigate between features, giving you full visibility into the health of your systems. The new navigation is gradually rolling out to all users on Grafana Cloud. If youre using Grafana Open Source and Enterprise, you can enable this feature using the `topnav` . Note: The Grafana documentation has not yet been updated to reflect changes to the navigation. Note: Plugin developers should refer to to upgrade their plugins to work seamlessly with the new navigation layout. {{< figure src="/media/docs/grafana/navigation-9-4.png" max-width="750px" caption="Grafana new navigation" >}} We've made the following changes to dashboards and visualizations. Learn more about dashboards in our . Available to preview using the `newPanelChromeUI` in all editions of Grafana. Dashboard panels contain a lot of information, some of which is difficult to discover or access from the dashboard. With our redesigned panels, we've improved accessibility and made it easier to understand the status of a panel by adding and moving key elements. Weve rethought the panel information architecture, added additional interaction points, and reduced visual clutter. To start, weve improved the support of panels without a header, made a distinction between details set by you and data-induced information, and then included all essential components in the header of the panel. All of these are laid out from left to right in a row, so there are no overlapping, unusable components. Grafanas new panel is available only for React-based panels; no Angular-based panels are redesigned. For example, Angular-based panel will still have the old Graph and Table visualizations. {{< video-embed src="/media/docs/grafana/screen-recording-panel-header-redesign-whats-new-9-4.mp4" max-width="750px" caption="Panel header redesign" >}} However, we have more planned: were going to make even more improvements to the accessibility of panels and improvements to panels without a header. Available to preview using the `datasourceOnboarding` . When you start your journey to create a dashboard or explore your data, but you don't have a data source connected yet, youll be shown a page that guides you to set up a first connection. Administrators can choose between selecting one of the most popular data sources or viewing the entire

Editors are guided to contact their administrator to configure data sources. In both cases, there's also an option to continue without setting up a data source and to use sample data instead. {{< figure src="/media/docs/grafana/screenshot-datasource-connection-onboarding-whats-new-9-4.png" max-width="750px" caption="Admin view of data source connection page on dashboard creation" >}} Generally available in all editions of Grafana. We've updated the Details section of a log line. Previously some of the interactions, such as filtering, showing statistics, or toggling the visibility were split across Labels and Detected fields. With the recent changes those two sections are combined and the interactions are available for all fields. {{< figure src="/static/img/logs/log-details-whats-new-9-4.png" max-width="750px" caption="Log details redesign with interactions" >}} Learn more about viewing logs in our . Generally available in all editions of Grafana. We added support to validate queries and visually display errors as a query is being written, without having to execute it to receive this feedback. This feature supports single and multi-line queries, with and without variables. {{< figure src="/media/docs/grafana/logs-loki-query-validation-whats-new-9-4.png" max-width="750px" caption="Loki query validation" >}} Learn more about viewing logs in our . Generally available in all editions of Grafana. For Loki metric queries in Explore, you can now see the sample of log lines that contributed to the displayed results. To see these logs, click on the collapsed Logs sample panel under your graph or table panel. If you want to interact with your log lines or modify the log query, click on the "Open logs in split view" button and the log query will be executed in the split view. {{< figure src="/media/docs/grafana/logs-sample-whats-new-9-4.png" max-width="750px" caption="Logs sample in Explore" >}} Available in **beta** in all editions of Grafana Canvas is a new panel that combines the power of Grafana with the flexibility of custom elements. Canvas visualizations are extensible form-built panels that allow you to explicitly place elements within static and dynamic layouts. This empowers you to design custom visualizations and overlay data in ways that arent possible with standard Grafana panels, all within Grafanas UI. If youve used popular UI and web design tools, then designing Canvas panels will feel very familiar. In Grafana v9.4, we have added the ability to create connections (arrows). Connections enable you to connect elements together to create more complex visualizations. We also added support for data links and a brand new server element. To learn more about the Canvas panel, refer to . {{< video-embed src="/media/docs/grafana/canvas-connections-9-4-0.mp4" max-width="750px" caption="Canvas panel connections" >}} All auth updates are generally available in all editions of Grafana. We've made the following changes to authentication and security. We have added a configuration option that enables you to require an expiration date limit for all newly created service account tokens. This change will not affect existing tokens. However, newly created tokens will require an expiration date that doesn't exceed the configuration option `tokenexpirationday_limit`. This option is disabled by default. Learn more about service accounts in our . While Grafana integrates with many different auth providers, we have received requests for a feature that enables you to bypass organization role synchronization for individual providers rather than for all configured providers. This option is now available for users who want to be able to use Grafana to manage their org roles. This option enables you to skip synchronization from your configured OAuth provider specifically in the auth provider section under

Previously users could only do this for certain providers using the `oauthskiporgrolesyncupdate` option, but this would include all of the configured providers. Learn more about Oauth in our . We're rolling out RBAC support to Grafana plugins, with Grafana OnCall being the first plugin to fully support RBAC. Previously, Grafana OnCall relied on the Grafana basic roles (for example, Viewer, Editor, and Admin) for authorization within the plugin. Before RBAC support in Grafana OnCall, it was only possible to allow your organization's users to either view everything, edit everything, or be an admin (which allowed edit access plus a few additional behaviors). With this new functionality, organizations will be able to harness fine-grained access control within Grafana OnCall. For example, you can assign a Viewer basic role to a user in your organization (users must still have a basic role assigned) and also assign them the new Grafana OnCall RBAC role of Schedules Editor. This assignment enables the user to view everything in Grafana OnCall, and edit OnCall schedules. Learn more about role-based access control in our . We've added auto-login support for SAML authentication, which you can turn on with the `auto_login` configuration option. We also have a unified configuration style among all authentication providers. Instead of using `oauthautologin`, use the new `auto_login` option to enable automatic login for specific OAuth providers. Learn more about SAML setup in our . This feature is available for Enterprise customers This feature adds support to push analytics events and auditing logs to Loki with multi-tenancy mode, by specifying a tenant id. Learn more about and in our docs. This feature is available for Enterprise customers Zoom is a new feature for reports that allows you to change the dimension of the panels of the PDF document. It enables you to zoom out to show more columns in a table, or zoom in to enlarge panels. You can modify the scale factor for each report in the report editor when you share the PDF directly from the dashboard page. {{< figure src="/media/docs/grafana/FormatReportScheduler9.4.png" max-width="750px" caption="Scale factor feature in Report format page" >}} {{< figure src="/media/docs/grafana/FormatReportShare9.4.png" max-width="750px" caption="Scale factor feature in Share functionality" >}} Learn more about reporting in our We've made major improvements to Grafana Alerts, from new contact points and search options to improved workflows between Alerting and OnCall. For all the details, refer to our . We've made the following changes to alert rules. Declare an incident from a firing alert, streamlining the alert to incident workflow. {{< figure src="/media/docs/alerting/declare-incident.png" max-width="500px" caption="Declare incidents from firing alerts" >}} To help you reuse existing alert rules or templates, make copies of alert rules from the Alert rule list view and templates from the Contact points page. {{< figure src="/media/docs/alerting/copy-alert-rules.png" max-width="750px" caption="Copy alert rules and notification templates" >}} View read-only query definitions for provisioned alerts from the Alert rule details page. Check quickly if your alert rule queries are correct, without diving into your "as-code" repository for rule definitions. {{< figure src="/media/docs/alerting/view-query-definitions.png" max-width="750px" caption="View query definitions for provisioned alerts" >}} Create and tune an alert rule in the UI, then export to YAML or JSON, and use it in the provisioning API or files. You can also export an entire rule group to review or use. This is supported in both the UI and provisioning API. {{< figure

max-width="750px" caption="Export alert rules" >}} Pause alert rule evaluation to prevent noisy alerting while tuning your alerts. Pausing stops alert rule evaluation and does not create any alert instances. This is different to mute timings, which stop notifications from being delivered, but still allow for alert rule evaluation and the creation of alert instances. {{< figure src="/media/docs/alerting/pause-alerts.png" max-width="750px" caption="Pause alert rule evaluations" >}} View the evaluation interval more easily from the grouped view on the Alert list page. The view now also always displays recording and normal alert rules and highlights alert rule status in different colors. {{< figure src="/media/docs/alerting/view-evaluation-interval.png" max-width="750px" caption="View evaluation interval on the Group view" >}} When managing large volumes of alerts, use extended alert rule search capabilities to filter folders, evaluation groups, and rules. Additionally, you can filter alert rules by their properties like labels, state, type, and health. {{< figure src="/media/docs/alerting/search-improvements.png" max-width="750px" caption="Improved search for your alert rules" >}} Lower costs and improve performance by adjusting the maximum number of data points returned from your alerting queries. Simplifies editing the evaluation interval for an alert rule within a new group. You no longer have to save the alert rule and group before editing the evaluation interval. We've made the following changes to alert contact points. Connecting your OnCall workflows just got easier. OnCall has been added as a contact point to simplify the integration between alert notifications and your OnCall implementation. {{< figure src="/media/docs/alerting/on-call-contact-point.png" max-width="750px" caption="View Grafana OnCall contact point" >}} We've improved the design and functionality of email templates to make template creation much easier and more customizable. The email template framework utilizes MJML to define and compile the final email HTML output. Sprig functions in the email templates provide more customizable template functions. {{< figure src="/static/img/docs/alerting/alert-templates-whats-new-v9.3.png" max-width="750px" caption="Email template redesign" >}} We've added Discord as a contact point receiver for Grafana Cloud alert rules. {{< figure src="/media/docs/alerting/support-discord.png" max-width="750px" caption="Add support for Discord" >}} We've made the following changes to alert administration. Introduces a new landing page that helps you get started quickly with Alerting. It also provides you with at a glance information on how Alerting works and a video to introduce you to key concepts. {{< figure src="/media/docs/alerting/landing-page.png" max-width="750px" caption="Alerting landing page" >}} Grafana Alerting is now compatible with AWS Aurora, but does not provide technical support for it. We've made improvements to all , fixing small bugs, and updating libraries. We've also added many new features and support for additional APIs. Refer to each datasource's documentation and the change log for additional information. We've added support for many new query types, including: SLO/SLI Values, RUM data, Events, and monitor group status. We've updated the Metric Selector to be faster and added support for filtering by management zone. We've also added support for Log Queries and querying the Dynatrace audit log. We've added support for many new query types, including: Audit events, Users, Merge request approvals, Field tags, Environments, and Pipelines. We've added support for derived columns and Honeycomb Environments. We've added support for trace search, log search, and support for NRQL histogram queries. We've added support for JWT authentication. We've added support for custom session parameters. The `database` property is now under the `jsonData` key in the data source configuration. This change is backward compatible, and existing configurations will continue to work. There are no known breaking changes associated with this version of Grafana. <!-- TODO: Add content -->