Grafana Labs has released Grafana 13.3, the latest update to its open-source observability and data visualization platform.
One of the most useful additions is cross-dashboard variables, which allow administrators to define a variable once and reuse it across multiple dashboards instead of keeping separate copies. They can be configured globally, making them available to every dashboard in an organization or restricted to dashboards within a specific folder.
The feature is currently in public preview across all Grafana editions. Self-hosted installations can enable it using the grafana.dashboardGlobalVariables feature toggle.
Grafana 13.3 also introduces the first phase of the platform’s largest visual refresh since Grafana 7. The updated interface includes redesigned dark and light themes, revised typography, softer borders, rounded corners, and new buttons, menus, and input controls.
Another addition is Notebooks, a new way to document and share investigations. Users can combine dashboard panels, queries from Explore, Grafana Assistant findings, and observations in a single editable document.
This makes it possible to preserve steps taken during troubleshooting, prepare incident reviews, and share findings with colleagues without relying on separate screenshots or documents. Notebooks can be saved, searched, edited, shared, and exported.
Grafana Assistant also gains dashboard planning capabilities. Instead of immediately generating a dashboard from a text prompt, the Assistant is able to first propose its structure, including panels, visualization types, variables, and layout. Users can review a read-only preview, request changes, and approve the final dashboard before it is created.
Additionally, the ability to undo changes made by Grafana Assistant is now generally available. A single undo action can revert modifications to multiple panels made during the same Assistant request.
On the visualization side, panel thresholds now support dashboard variables, allowing threshold values to be adjusted without manually editing individual panels. The Sort by transformation supports multiple sorting fields, while panel descriptions can be displayed as subtitles directly beneath panel titles.
Cross-filtering support has also been extended to Histogram, State timeline, and Status History visualizations. Meanwhile, panel-specific time settings and comparisons are now generally available, letting users compare different periods or override a panel’s time range without entering dashboard edit mode.
The Text visualization also receives a public preview update that allows query data to populate tables, cards, lists, and status summaries rather than limiting users to static content.
For alerting, Grafana 13.3 launches a public preview option to import existing Prometheus or Mimir Alertmanager configurations into Grafana Alerting. This includes notification routing and related settings, lessening the need to recreate them manually when migrating alert rules.
Finally, Grafana Cloud and Enterprise users gain generally available custom headers and footers for PDF reports, while administrators should review a role-management behavior change that allows authorized role managers to revoke permissions they do not personally hold.
For more information, see the release announcement and the Grafana 13.3 documentation.
