Grafana Fundamentals and Navigation
This domain checks whether you can orient yourself in the Grafana UI, understand the user and organization model, and use time and dashboard controls correctly. The exam favors precise UI labels and role behavior over broad concepts.
Navigation and search
Grafana's left navigation is the starting point. Home shows starred dashboards and recent activity; Dashboards opens the browse view with folders, tags, starred and recent filters; Explore is for ad hoc queries that are not saved as panels; Connections is where data sources are added; Administration appears only for users with admin rights. Press Ctrl+K (Cmd+K on macOS) to open search, then filter by title, folder or tag. Star a dashboard to pin it to Home. Kiosk mode removes navigation chrome for wall displays; TV mode is intended for playlist-style viewing.
Organizations, users, and roles
An organization is the top-level tenant: dashboards, folders, data sources and users belong to it, and a user can belong to more than one organization. The built-in roles are Viewer (read-only), Editor (create and edit dashboards, panels and playlists), Admin (manage organization users, teams, data sources and settings), and Grafana Admin (server-level administration across organizations). An organization Admin cannot change server configuration. Folders group dashboards and can carry permissions where the edition supports them.
Time controls and lifecycle
The dashboard time picker accepts relative ranges such as now-6h and absolute ranges. Refresh intervals control automatic reloads. A panel can override the dashboard time range in Panel options > Query options > Relative time. Save, Save as and Version history let you branch or restore. Snapshots freeze data at a point in time.
Worked example
A colleague sets the dashboard time picker to Last 6 hours. Every panel updates except one, which still shows a 24-hour window. The cause is a panel-level relative time override, not a broken query. Open the panel, go to Panel options > Query options, and clear or change Relative time; the panel then follows the dashboard picker. If the panel is repeated or linked, check repeat options and dashboard links as well, because those can carry their own time settings.
Traps that cost marks
- Confusing Viewer with Editor, or Grafana Admin with organization Admin.
- Treating an organization as a folder, or assuming folders are always permission boundaries.
- Mixing up kiosk mode and TV/playlist mode.
- Forgetting that a panel can override the dashboard time range.
- Assuming refresh is instant for every panel after a time change.