Time range controls

This documentation topic is designed for Grafana workspaces that support Grafana version 8.x.

For Grafana workspaces that support Grafana version 10.x, see Working in Grafana version 10.

For Grafana workspaces that support Grafana version 9.x, see Working in Grafana version 9.

Amazon Managed Grafana provides several ways to manage the time ranges of the data that are being visualized, both at the dashboard level and at the panel level.

This topic describes supported time units and relative ranges, the common time controls, dashboard-wide time settings, and panel-specific time settings.

Note

To have time controls, your data must include a time column. See the documentation for your specific data source for more information about including a time column.

Time units and relative ranges

The following time units are supported:

• s (seconds)

• m (minutes)

• h (hours),

• d (days)

• w (weeks)

• M (months)

• y (years)

Use the minus operator to step back in time, relative to now. To display the full period of the unit (such as day, week, or month), append /<time unit>.

Use the plus operator to step forward in time relative to now. You can use this feature to look at predicted data for the future.

Here are some examples:

Example relative range	From	To
Last 5 minutes	now-5m	now
The day so far	now/d	now
This week	now/w	now/w
Week to date	now/w	now
Previous month	now-1M/M	now-1M/M

Common time range controls

The dashboard and panel time controls have a common user interface, with the following options.

Current time range

The current time range, also called the time picker, shows the time range currently displayed in the dashboard or panel that you are viewing.

Pause on a field to see the exact timestamps in the range and their source, such as the local browser.

To change the time range, choose on the current time range. You can change the current time using a relative time range, such as the last 15 minutes, or an absolute time range, such as 2020-05-14 00:00:00 to 2020-05-15 23:59:59.

Relative time range

Select the relative time range from the Relative time ranges list. Here are some examples of relative time ranges:

• Last 30 minutes

• Last 12 hours

• Last 7 days

• Last 2 years

• Yesterday

• Day before yesterday

• This day last week

• Today so far

• This week so far

• This month so far

Absolute time range

Set an absolute time range one of two ways:

• Enter values in the From and To fields. You can enter exact time values or relative values, such as now-24h, and then choose Apply time range.

• Choose the From or To field. Amazon Managed Grafana displays a calendar. Choose the day or days that you want to use as the current time range and then choose Apply time range.

Amazon Managed Grafana also displays recently used absolute ranges.

Zoom out (Cmd+Z or Ctrl+Z)

To view a larger time range in the dashboard or panel visualization, choose the Time range zoom out icon.

Zoom in (for graph visualizations only)

In the graph visuaization, drag to select the time range that you want to view.

Refresh dashboard

Choose the Refresh dashboard icon to run every query on the dashboard immediately and refresh the visualizations. Amazon Managed Grafana cancels any pending requests when a new refresh is started.

By default, Amazon Managed Grafana does not automatically refresh the dashboard. Queries run on their own schedule according to the panel settings. However, if you want to regularly refresh the dashboard, choose the down arrow next to the Refresh dashboard icon, and then select a refresh interval.

Dashboard time settings

Time settings are saved on a per-dashboard basis.

To access the dashboard time settings, choose the Dashboard settings (gear) icon at the top of the screen. The settings are in the Time Options section of the General tab.

• Timezone – The local time zone of the service or system that you are monitoring. This can be helpful when you monitor a system or service that operates across several time zones.

  • Default – The default selected time zone for the user profile, team, or organization. If no time zone is specified for the user profile, a team that the user is a member of, or the organization, Amazon Managed Grafana uses local browser time.

  • Browser Time The time zone that is configured for the browser that is being used. This is usually the time zone that is set on the computer.

  • Coordinated Universal Time – Standard ISO 8601 time zones, including UTC. For more information, see a list of time zones.

• Auto-refresh – Customizable options the relative time and auto-refresh settings. Entries are separated by commas and can be any valid time unit.

• Now delay now- – Time delay value that overrides the now value. Most commonly, this feature is used to avoid null values by accommodating known delays in data aggregation.

• Hide time picker – Option for not displaying the time picker.

Panel time overrides and time shift

In Query options, you can override the relative time range for individual panels, causing them to be different from what is selected in the dashboard time picker in the top navigation bar. You can show metrics from different time periods or days at the same time.

Controlling the time range using a URL

You can control the time range of a dashboard by providing the following query parameters in the dashboard URL:

• from – Defines the lower limit of the time range, specified in ms epoch or relative time. For more information, see Relative time range.

• to – Defines the upper limit of the time range, specified in ms epoch or relative time. For more information, see Relative time range.

• time and time.window – Define a time range from time-time.window/2 to time+time.window/2. Both parameters should be specified in milliseconds. For example, ?time=1500000000000&time.window=10000 results in a 10-second time range from 1499999995000 to 1500000005000