Business Suite for Grafana. How it all came together and where we move from here
The Business Suite for Grafana is a collection of open-source plugins designed to streamline business application development in Grafana.
With a total number of all plugin downloads exceeding 23 million, we call it a success. This suite has garnered praise from hundreds of users who are thrilled with its ability to go beyond observability and solve complex business tasks, making it a trusted choice for companies aiming to create cost-effective applications in-house and meet aggressive delivery schedules.
We actively support all our plugins and timely update them to be compatible with the latest Grafana versions. You can always follow the release schedule and other plugin statistics on one of our public projects.
When we discuss Grafana, our focus is on what this platform is capable of to deliver to an end-user. That's why we provide detailed plugin documentation and specific use cases with step-by-step solutions.
Whether it's for monitoring system performance or analyzing business data, our aim is to show that building with Grafana can be both time and cost-efficient. More importantly, its functionality can be fine-tuned to your particular needs, ensuring you have all the answers without unnecessary features.
Plugins
Currently, the Business Suite consists of 9+1 uniquely positioned plugins, each developed for its niche of tasks.
- Business Media panel to display Base64 encoded media files.
- Business News data source to visualize RSS/Atom feeds.
- Business Text panel for dynamic, data-driven text.
- Business Satellite data source to connect to Local and Remote Grafana instances.
- Business Forms panel to insert, update application data, and modify configuration.
- Business Charts panel for powerful visualizations powered by Apache ECharts.
- Business Calendar panel to display events and set time range.
- Business Input data source to store and create your data using AI.
- Business Variable panel to update dashboard variables.
We are expecting the first release of the Business Table towards the end of August.
Business Media
About three years ago, we became part of the vibrant Grafana community. Our first project was an AI image recognition, counting the cars on a busy highway. Grafana was a significant asset, but we faced a unique challenge. To address this, we developed our first community plugin. This panel allowed us to visualize base64 encoded images, allowing us to monitor the real-time movement of objects on our Grafana dashboard.
Many other formats have been added since the first image format, including PDF, video and audio files. Now the plugin is known as the Business Media panel with almost 3,000,000 downloads worldwide.
During the latest GrafanaCon held in Amsterdam, we learned that this plugin has been used by JAXA, the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency, in their breathtaking Moon landing project
It was staggering to realize that the Business Media was chosen to monitor the probe movements in real time.
Business News
Following the Business Media panel, we embarked on another innovative journey. We created a data source for RSS and Atom news formats, envisioning a Grafana dashboard that would display all the latest news and updates from various web resources.
Eventually, we submitted this new data source for the Grafana team's review and were excited to have another plugin added to the Grafana catalog. Now, it is known as the Business News and has nearly 800,000 downloads.
To accompany the Business News data source, soon after we adopted the Business Text panel (previously known as the Dynamic Text). This couple is capable of providing for numerous scenarios. We are happy to report that you can find the following references in the Grafana documentation:
If you're unable to display an RSS feed using the news visualization, you can try using the community RSS/Atom data source plugin in combination with the Dynamic text community panel. This will allow you to display the RSS feed in a different way.
Business Text
We adopted the first plugin release (back then known as the Dynamic Text) so we could prettify the news feed. Slowly, however, this plugin turned into a mini development framework within Grafana dashboard. It became possible after we allowed custom JavaScript code in the plugin options including the loading of external resources.
The Business Text panel has become the most popular Volkov Labs plugin with more than 7,000,000 downloads. The plugin truly cuts through many corners with its ability to integrate external JavaScript libraries. With that functionality, beloved panel like Flowchart can have a second life.
Currently, the plugin is called the Business Text, but it could as well be named a swiss army knife for Grafana. Read the feedback about the Business Text plugin written by one of the community members.
While it is principally designed to use handlebars to help display custom HTML in a panel, it also provides a great place to run Javascript code that can interact with so much Grafana backend stuff.
It's absolutely revolutionized how I can get extra flexibility from Grafana when my needs aren't / can't be covered by the default UI.
Business Satellite
Shortly after the successful Business News and Business Text plugin combo, we started working on another plugin. Initially, we called it the HTTP API data source, but presently, it is known as the Business Satellite. It facilitates access to the Grafana configuration database, the central repository for all Grafana settings, alerts, and annotations.
By default, Grafana allows you to work with the widgets, the predefined visualization panels that work via an invisible data source. With the Business Satellite data source, you can access the public Grafana APIs and display the results on any visualization panel.
As of this moment, the Business Satellite data source supports the following API calls:
- annotations,
- dashboards metadata,
- data sources,
- alerts,
- health information,
- organization users.
We are open to new suggestions. Please open a feature request if your task requires working with something else.
The plugin offers a distinctive functionality. There is no way to access the Grafana configuration database from the Grafana dashboard (aside from widgets).
The plugin also allows you to create a particular setting to work with multiple Grafana instances from one Grafana dashboard. In that setting, you can create one Grafana dashboard to monitor all other Grafana instances in one place.
Business Forms
As with most other Business Suite plugins, this one came to life due to the problem we needed to solve for our clients. The IoT device operators found Grafana's observability capability astonishing; they had all they could have requested for effective device monitoring.
For them, Grafana dashboards became a one-stop for making important production decisions to the point that switching to another system for interacting with devices seems inconvenient. We responded to the request and created a panel (one of a kind at the time) that could send data back from Grafana to the data source. With that functionality, device operators could stay in one application (Grafana dashboard) for all everyday activities.
In the first release, the plugin supported only one initial request type, REST API. As of today, it also supports the Data Source and Query. The incoming and outgoing payloads can be specified using the Query editor.
At first glance, the Business Forms options categories might seem complex. To address this, we've created a data flow schema. This visual representation clarifies how the options interact, answering most of the questions we've received and providing a clear path forward.
In the documentation to this plugin, we share a ready-to-use code for 5 basic API servers:
- InfluxDB,
- JSON,
- MySQL,
- Node-RED,
- PostgreSQL.
This should give you a good start in your programming endeavors.
Business Charts
The plugin is powered by the Apache ECharts library.
Every plugin has a specific role in our Business Suite, in addition to that, the Business Charts has a special place in our hearts. With this plugin you can build highly customizable charts of any kind. From simple lines, bars, radar, theme rivers, to maps and 3D simulations. The graphs can be dynamic or transforming from one to another.
Even animations are not outside the plugin limits.
To get you started faster, we host the Examples project where you can review the code for each chart type.
Business Calendar
Imagine having all the informational tidbits that you analyze every day neatly organized in one place. Why not add schedules, important events, and release dates to that mix with a Calendar panel and seamlessly integrate it with other Grafana features like filters?
We started with basic calendar functionality, and soon embedded the Big Calendar library as its core.
Among many Business Calendar panel features are:
- Intuitive multi-language toolbar.
- Ability to combine data from any data sources.
- Event filter by a time range.
- Event coloring based on the Grafana Thresholds.
- Displaying of annotations across all dashboards for the specified period.
Business Input
This plugin has started as a helping hand in visualization panel development. In the first release, it allowed users to manually create a data frame with the needed data types for quick and simple visualization panel testing. In the latest versions you can find this plugin enriched with the JavaScript module added to simplify the data emulation.
In short, the latest version of the Business Input data source allows you to:
- Create static visualizations that don't depend on a specific data source.
- Allows specifying values manually or using the JavaScript Values Editor code.
- Store data and images directly in the dashboard.
OpenAI and custom models
But that is not all!
In addition to all mentioned above, the Business Input data source supports LLM models (OpenAI, custom) using LLM App from Grafana. When LLM App is configured, a text area appears in the Code editor mode.
This text area allows you to use the response that will be received from the LLM App together with OpenAI. The result is stored in the context.llmResult object.
Business Variable
The Business Variable panel builds on top of the native dashboard variables. It allows you to have dashboard filters in a separate panel, which you can place anywhere on the dashboard.
The Business Variable panel offers many layouts with robust options, including Minimize, Slider, Buttons and an advanced TreeView layouts. The Grafana thresholds feature is also supported.
Among many beloved cases that this panel solves with ease is dashboard redirect. This feature allows the corresponding dashboard to be opened to a variable value. It is useful, for instance, if a variable panel displays a list of some devices where every device requires a specific dashboard.
The corresponding dashboard opens when a user selects a device in the Business Variable panel. This makes the dashboard switch not obvious to users, who might feel like they stay in one place.
Business Table
This plugin is not yet available for the public, but it should be before the end of August. The main features will include:
- Tree View with expandable and collapsible elements.
- Supporting tabs for multiple data frame views.
- Summarizing large amount of data.
Mix and Match the Business Suite plugins
After three years of improvements and ensuring test coverage more than 95%, all our open-source plugins beautifully came together and formed the open-source Business Suite. Furthermore, in addition to using our plugins individually, you can combine them to achieve astonishing results.
A great example of plugin combination is the file upload example. It is described in detail in one of our blog posts "File upload using the Grafana dashboard".
There, three plugins are combined:
- Business Forms to allow user choosing a file and then sending it to the data source.
- Business Variable to list and choose the uploaded files.
- Business Media to display one selected among uploaded files.
Input data source, Media panel, Variable panel tutorial
In this video, Daria covers the Business Input data source, Business Media panel, and Business Variable panel, explaining what those plugins do and the best way to start with them.
Text panel, News data source, and Satellite data source
Daria reviews Business Text, Business News data source, and the Business Satellite data source in this video.
Business Forms panel
In this video, Daria reviews Business Forms panel.
What does the future hold?
We plan to expand and improve existing plugins. The Grafana community is excellent for helping to determine what should happen next for each plugin.
We carefully study all the questions we receive on our YouTube channel and GitHub repository and use many as inspiration. Based on our three years of active interaction with the community, we can attest that those ideas will never cease to pour in.
The latest Grafana 11 compatibility
We are always on the lookout for the latest Grafana news and upcoming features to ensure our plugins are compatible with the latest Grafana updates.
Grafana is one of a kind, incredible tool that can be a focal point of your web-application development. We have productive experience with it and will continue to explore and create together! Bravo Grafana!
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