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Import dashboards and rules

Import the bundled dashboards and alert rules into a business group, and adjust thresholds before enabling.

Where this page ends: a business group that now has this component's dashboards, plus a batch of alert rules sitting disabled, waiting for you to adjust thresholds and enable them one by one.

Nightingale ships templates for 86 components. Once metrics are arriving there is no need to draw panels or write rules from scratch — import the templates into a business group and tune them.

What a component ships with​

Integrations → Components, click any component card, and the drawer has four tabs:

TabContents
InstructionsHow this component is collected — see Install collector configuration
MetricsWhich metrics it produces and what each one means
DashboardsReady-made dashboard templates
Alert rulesReady-made alert rule templates

Not every component has all four. Of the 86, 64 ship alert rules, 54 ship dashboards, and 22 ship metric descriptions.

Importing dashboards​

On the component drawer's Dashboards tab the columns are Name / Tags / Note / Updated by / Operations. Bundled entries show System in the Updated by column.

Tick the rows you want and click Import to business group. The dialog has two fields:

FieldNotes
Business groupWhere it lands. It must be a leaf group; intermediate levels are not selectable
ContentPre-filled with the JSON of the templates you ticked; normally leave it alone

Click Clone to finish. The dashboards then appear under Explorer → Dashboards with that business group selected.

The import is a one-time copy: when Nightingale is upgraded and a template changes, dashboards you already imported do not follow. Re-import to pick up the new version.

Panel data sources are not chosen at import time, they are chosen when the dashboard is opened — so one imported copy can be pointed at different sources.

Importing alert rules​

On the Alert rules tab, tick the rules and click Import to business group. This dialog has more fields than the dashboard one:

FieldNotes
Business groupAs above, must be a leaf group
EnabledOff by default. Leave it off until the thresholds are right
Source typeRead-only, derived from the templates themselves. Bundled rules are almost always prometheus
Data sourceWhich source(s) these rules run against. A Data source preview sits next to it
Notification ruleWhere events go; you can pick an existing one or create one inline
ContentThe rules' JSON, pre-filled

Click Import to finish.

One import covers one data source type. Mixing types produces "Cannot import alert rules of different data source types" and disables the submit button — import them in two passes.

The other direction: from the dashboard and rule lists​

If you would rather not start in the template center, the reverse path works too:

  • Explorer → Dashboards → pick a business group → Import, and the first tab is Import built-in dashboard: choose a Component, then tick rows in the Templates table. That table has an extra Variable column so you can set dashboard variables before importing;
  • Alerts & Notifications → Alert rules → pick a business group → Import, first tab Import built-in alert rules, which adds a Category dropdown (a component often ships two rule sets — xxx_by_categraf and xxx_by_exporter — split by how the data was collected).

Both entry points read the same templates through the same API; use whichever page you are already on.

Those Import buttons only appear once a leaf business group is selected.

A third entry point: one-click import after saving a data source​

When a Prometheus-type data source is saved successfully, the result panel runs a template match: it merges the sentinel metrics of the bundled templates into a single query against your source, and whichever sentinels have recent samples tell it which components' data is already there. Those components are then listed as cards:

Found data from 3 components in this datasource. Click a card to import templates

Clicking a card opens the import dialog with dashboards and alert rules on separate tabs, each showing its count. This path works for Prometheus-family sources only, and it judges "has recent data", not "has ever had data".

Adjust thresholds before enabling​

The thresholds in bundled rules are generic defaults, not calibrated for your environment. After importing, go through at least these three:

  1. The threshold. "CPU above 90%" is normal on a load generator and an incident on a database primary;
  2. The for-duration. A rule that fires on every blip gets ignored fast; look at how much the metric normally moves first;
  3. Notification rule and severity. S1 should wake someone up; S3 should not.

Then turn Enabled on. Enabling all of them at once is the classic way to lose the team's trust — switch on the five that matter, watch for a week, then do the next batch.

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