Define default value for Grafana dashboard variable

Question

I have defined a variable in a Grafana dashboard through Grafana dashboard settings Variable is of "Custom" type. I want this variable having a default value when dashboard is opened.

How can I set a default value ?

score 17 · Answer 1 · answered Aug 11 '20 at 11:39

17

Choose your default value in dashboard and then save dashboard.
Tick "Save current variable values as dashboard default".
Default value is now set to the value you chose.

answered Aug 11 '20 at 11:39

RandomCoder

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Which grafana version is this? – Sida Zhou Nov 03 '20 at 02:49
2

These steps do not work for sharing dashboards externally. Any idea how we can use a default variable value for sharing dashboards externally? – richik jaiswal Sep 13 '21 at 12:34
This didn't work with grafana 8.1.5. – Classified Dec 11 '21 at 08:47

score 1 · Answer 2 · answered Dec 13 '21 at 14:08

If you'd like to avoid ClickOps by interacting with Grafana UI to persist config changes, then you can modify Grafana's dashboard JSON model - this will allow you to share your dashboard.

Let's say that you have defined your custom variable (like on the image below), and you would like to set 1[m] as a default value.

Then what you should do next, is to find this variable definition in Grafana's dashboard JSON model (look at templating.list location) and set "selected" to true in "options" and add/modify "current" section. Your config should resemble below settings.

...
"current": {
  "selected": true,
  "text": "1m",
  "value": "1m"
},
"options": [
  {
    "selected": true,
    "text": "1m",
    "value": "1m"
  },
  {
    "selected": false,
    "text": "3m",
    "value": "3m"
  },
  ...
],
...

Define default value for Grafana dashboard variable

2 Answers2