Golden Grot Winner, Master Educator Award, Business Suite, and Business Studio: Highlights of 2024
As 2024 comes to a close, we at Volkov Labs are thrilled to reflect on a year filled with remarkable achievements, exciting surprises, and meaningful growth. We've reached many milestones, set ambitious goals for 2025, and remain deeply grateful to be part of such a vibrant and supportive community.
Before we dive into the new year, let’s take a quiet moment to look back. If you’re reading this on a peaceful day, grab a cozy seat, pour yourself something delightful, and join us in savoring the highlights of 2024. Let’s celebrate together!
Golden Grot Winner Award
For nearly three years, we’ve collaborated with Theia Scientific and Chris Fields on a project that empowers nuclear scientists across the US to efficiently assess material quality under microscopes. This year, the dashboard we co-developed earned the prestigious Golden Grot Award, one of only two awarded annually—one for personal and one for professional categories.
Chris kindly shared the award with us for a photo opportunity. The trophy itself is striking—made of glassy material, it’s both hefty and elegant, embodying celebration and achievement.
Master Educator Award
In December, Mikhail and I were honored to receive the Master Educator Grafana Champions Award. This recognition celebrates our commitment to creating high-quality educational content—blog posts, tutorials, and video guides—that help unlock Grafana’s full potential. These resources play a vital role in fostering Grafana’s growth by providing accessible learning materials and actionable insights.
The online award ceremony was an absolute blast. Two emotions stood out afterward:
- Grafana’s championship program is truly exceptional.
- Community recognition feels incredibly special and, above all, inspiring. We’re already planning a packed roadmap for 2025, so stay tuned for more products, ideas, solutions, and tutorials!
Welcoming a New Team Member
At the start of 2024, Vitaliy joined our team as a helper and quickly became our go-to problem-solver, managing a surge of community requests with remarkable skill. His dedication to tackling open issues on GitHub is unmatched, and we’re thrilled to have him on board. Thank you, Vitaliy, for your hard work and patience—it’s a privilege to work alongside you.
We’re also excited to announce that another team member will join us in 2025 as we continue to grow!
Business Suite: A Milestone Achievement
The Business Suite has been a three-year journey of evolution. What began as a set of plugins to address specific client needs has grown into a comprehensive open-source collection with over 29 million downloads. This suite now offers robust solutions for long-standing challenges, contributing to its rising popularity.
We closely monitor plugin statistics using our Release Dashboard. Learn how we built it in this blog post or watch a detailed video on our YouTube channel.
The Business Suite tackles diverse tasks, including:
- File uploads - Learn how to implement and manage file upload functionality in form panels.
- Date-pickers - Explore the integration and customization of date-picker components for selecting dates.
- Dashboard switching - Understand how to enable seamless dashboard redirection and switching using variable panels.
- Device management - Discover techniques for managing devices through form panels for better control and organization.
For a deeper look at the Business Suite and its powerful combinations, check out our August 2024 blog post.
Grafana also featured the Business Suite in their September 2024 blog post, Convert Your Dashboards into Comprehensive Web Applications with the Business Suite for Grafana.
We’re proud of the Business Suite as a key highlight of our 2024 software development efforts. Explore the latest updates, examples, and solutions in our official documentation.
Business Table: A Community Favorite
Released in September, the Business Table plugin has taken the community by storm. Despite our best efforts, the number of open GitHub issues remains high due to its overwhelming popularity. It’s quickly becoming a standout in our Business Suite for two key reasons:
- Flexible table layouts for data visualization, including Tree View and nested objects.
- The ability to send data back to the source with add and delete row functionality.
Currently, the plugin supports seven data flows:
- Three for general data: Add, Edit, and Delete.
- Four for nested object data: Get, Add, Edit, and Delete options.
Each flow offers:
- Compatibility with data sources specified as variables.
- Permission configurations based on roles or query data.
Business Studio: Public Preview Release
The cherry on top of 2024 was the public preview release of Business Studio, a Business Intelligence platform designed to streamline working with multiple Grafana instances. In version 2.2.0, users can create alert rules and actions, and monitor alert statuses across as many Grafana instances as needed. This tool significantly simplifies alert-driven analytics for business users.
Download installers for MacOS, Linux, and Windows from our Release Notes blogs.
YouTube Channel Hits 3,700 Subscribers
Our YouTube channel continues to grow, reaching 3,700 subscribers by the end of 2024. The steady daily views confirm we’re on the right track, and we’re incredibly grateful to each of you. Our next video will be our 100th—a milestone worth celebrating in 2025!
This year, we uploaded 33 videos, received 324 comments, and saw 918 shares. Your engagement inspires us, and we’re committed to delivering even more valuable content.
Compatibility with the Latest Grafana Versions
All Business Suite plugins are fully compatible with Scenes-powered dashboards introduced in Grafana 11.3. How do we stay ahead of Grafana’s updates? That’s our little secret. Rest assured, we’re dedicated to maintaining compatibility and will continue to do so.
Wrapping Up 2024
Reflecting on last year’s highlights, I wrote:
“Indeed, I am looking forward with a fast-beating heart to sitting down at the end of 2024 and writing another article with a big smile, more hopes, more plans, and the feeling of outstanding accomplishments!”
I’m delighted to say that’s exactly how I feel today. 2024 has been extraordinary, filled with hope, ambitious plans, and a profound sense of achievement. Let’s aim to feel the same at the end of 2025.
Stay tuned and keep creating with us—there’s so much more to come! Wishing you a wonderful holiday season, filled with joy and hope for the future.
We’d Love to Hear From You!
Your feedback is invaluable to us, and we’re excited to connect with our community and partners. Whether you have a creative idea, or an issue to report, here are the best ways to reach out:
- Enterprise Partners: Need support or have an urgent request? Submit a Zendesk ticket for fast, personalized assistance from our team.
- Community Members: Have a feature suggestion, or bug to report? Start a conversation by creating a GitHub discussions. We’re all ears!
- Join the Conversation: Stay in the loop and share your thoughts! Subscribe to our YouTube Channel and drop a comment—we’re eager to hear your perspective.
Your input drives our improvement, so don’t hesitate to connect with us!
