Annotations

Annotations provide a way to mark points on the graph with rich events. When you hover over an annotation you can get event description and event tags. The text field can include links to other systems with more detail.

To use annotations, make sure you are using the stable release of the Grafana plugin. 

Adding annotations

You can add one-off annotations easily to a graph. 

1. Hold down Ctrl/Cmd+Click
2. Fill out the form that pops up by providing a description and tag.
Adding tags to the annotation will make it searchable from other dashboards.

Querying DataSet Data Source for Annotations

Annotation events can be fetched via annotation queries. And annotations based upon the queries will be populated on the Grafana dashboard 

Grafana will query DataSet for any logs matching the user-provided query, transform them into the format Grafana expects for annotations, and then pass them back to Grafana, which will show them as vertical lines on the user's graphs.

To add a new annotation query to a dashboard:

1. Open the dashboard settings menu.
2. Select Annotations. This will open the dashboard annotations settings view.
3. To create a new annotation query hit the New button.
4. Give it a Name
4. Select DataSet for the Data Source
5. Add a query. It is best to test this in DataSet. 
6. Select the time field e.g. timestamp
7. (optional) select an end time field if you want the annotation to show up as an area on the graph.
8. Select the field of the message you want to show up e.g. message

Continue to Grafana Variables