This document describes how to create and manage custom dashboards by using the Google Cloud console. Custom dashboards let you display information that is of interest to you, organized in a way that's useful to you. For example, you might create a dashboard to display the logs, performance metrics, and alerting policies for virtual machines (VM) in your production environment. After you create a custom dashboard, you can also copy, modify, and share it. To create dashboards, you can use the Google Cloud console, the Cloud Monitoring API, or the Google Cloud CLI.
This document describes how to create and manage your custom dashboards by using the Google Cloud console:
This feature is supported only for Google Cloud projects. For App Hub configurations, select the App Hub host project or management project.
Custom dashboards support a variety of widget types, so you can choose the best way to display your data. By default, dashboards display all metric data that is available to your Google Cloud project. If you configure a metrics scope, then your dashboard can display metric data for multiple Google Cloud projects.
A custom dashboard can display all of the following:
You can improve the load time or usability of a dashboard by grouping widgets. For example, you might add sections to a dashboard. Alternatively, you might add widgets to a container which is either expanded or collapsed.
After you create a dashboard, you can add filters, variables, events, or user-defined labels:
Dashboard-wide filters apply to all widgets on the dashboard. These filters can be helpful when you are troubleshooting. For example, you can use these filters to display data only for a specific zone. For more information, see Add or remove filters.
Variables apply to selected widgets. For example, you can use a variable to modify the query issued by the widget, or to control the visibility of a widget. For more information, see Create and manage variables and pinned filters.
Events, such as the crash of a Google Kubernetes Engine Pod, can help you correlate data from different sources when you're troubleshooting an issue. For more information, see Show events on a dashboard.
Labels can help you locate dashboards based on the
type of content
they display. For example, you might add the label prod to dashboards
that display information about production systems. Similarly, you might
add the label staging to indicate the dashboard displays information
about staging systems.
Complete the following in the Google Cloud project where you want to create and manage dashboards:
To get the permissions that
you need to create and modify custom dashboards by using the Google Cloud console,
ask your administrator to grant you the
Monitoring Editor (roles/monitoring.editor) IAM role on your project.
For more information about granting roles, see Manage access to projects, folders, and organizations.
You might also be able to get the required permissions through custom roles or other predefined roles.
For more information about roles, see Control access with Identity and Access Management.
There are different approaches that you can use to add a custom dashboard to your Google Cloud project:
For example, suppose you have multiple Google Cloud projects and you want them to define the same custom dashboard. For this situation, you might create the dashboard in one project and then download a template for the dashboard to your local system. Next, you can install that template in other Google Cloud projects.
To create a custom dashboard, do the following:
In the Google Cloud console, go to the Dashboards page:
If you use the search bar to find this page, then select the result whose subheading is Monitoring.
To add widgets to your dashboard, do the following:
In the Add widget pane, select a widget to add to your dashboard.
You can select a widget based on the type of data to display or how you want to display the data. In all cases, a configuration pane is opened. For example, you can select the Metric widget and then set the visualization to Stacked area. Or, you can select the Stacked area widget and then select the metric.
Configure the widget.
To apply your changes to the dashboard, in the toolbar, click Apply. To discard your changes, click Cancel.
After the widget is added to your dashboard, you can change the widget's configuration.
To save your modified dashboard, in the toolbar, click Save.
Optional: Add user-defined labels to your dashboard:
To create a label and add it to your dashboard, in the Create a new label section, enter the name of the label in the textbox and then click Create and apply.
When you want to experiment with different metrics or different aggregation options, you can copy a dashboard and then use the new dashboard for experimentation purposes.
To copy a dashboard, do the following:
In the Google Cloud console, go to the Dashboards page:
If you use the search bar to find this page, then select the result whose subheading is Monitoring.
To copy a dashboard from one project to another, your IAM role for the destination Google Cloud projects must include the Monitoring editor permission. For more information about roles, see Control access with Identity and Access Management.
To copy a dashboard to another Google Cloud project, do the following:
In the Google Cloud console, go to the Dashboards page:
If you use the search bar to find this page, then select the result whose subheading is Monitoring.
Copy the dashboard's JSON into your clipboard:
Paste the JSON in your clipboard into a new dashboard created in a different project:
You can upload to your Google Cloud project a template for a dashboard, when that template is stored in a shared location. Cloud Monitoring, for example, provides a curated set of dashboard templates on GitHub that are specific to various Google Cloud services. The charts on these dashboards present a selection of metrics relevant to a specific service.
After you upload a dashboard template, you can customize it. For example, you might add charts, add labels, or configure which events to display.
For more information, see Install a dashboard template.
Cloud Monitoring provides an importer that you can use to import dashboard files in the Grafana JSON format into Cloud Monitoring. For more information, see Import Grafana dashboards into Cloud Monitoring.
Custom dashboards are displayed in the same list as the service-specific dashboards that Cloud Monitoring creates as you add resources to your Google Cloud project.
To view a dashboard, do the following:
In the Google Cloud console, go to the Dashboards page:
If you use the search bar to find this page, then select the result whose subheading is Monitoring.
In the toolbar of the Google Cloud console, select your Google Cloud project. For App Hub configurations, select the App Hub host project or management project.
The Dashboards page lists all dashboards in your Google Cloud project.
To find a dashboard, do any of the following:
Use the Recently Viewed and Favorites options to restrict which dashboards are listed.
Use the Integrations menu to list only those dashboards that are associated with a specific integration.
Use the Type menu to list only those dashboards that have a specific type. For example, to list the dashboards that are created automatically by Google Cloud based on your usage of Google Cloud services, in the Type menu, select Google Services. To further refine the list, use the filter_list Filter bar.
Use the Labels menu to list only those dashboards that have a
specific user-defined label. For example, suppose you created a label
named Staging and then
applied that label to your dashboards
that display information about your staging resources. To list these
dashboards, select the label Staging.
To further refine the list, use the filter_list Filter bar.
Add filters to the filter_list Filter bar:
To list dashboards whose name or description contains specific text, enter that text into the filter_list Filter bar.
To list dashboards after filtering by the value of dashboard field, do the following:
Select Search your dashboards and then select a field to filter by. You can filter by the following dashboard fields: name, description, type, and user-defined label.
Either enter a value for the filter or make a selection from the menu.
To list dashboards that don't have any charts, select Search your dashboards, select Labels, and then select (Empty).
When you add multiple filters and don't include the OR operator
between two filters, an AND operator joins the filters.
After you locate the dashboard, select it.
You can determine what changes were made to a dashboard by viewing the version history, which lists the user that made a change, and how many changes were made. You can also revert to a previous version of the dashboard, or compare a previous version to the current version by viewing the diff. Revisions to an existing dashboard are retained for 90 days, but the latest revision is retained indefinitely.
To view the version history for a dashboard, do the following:
In the Google Cloud console, go to the Dashboards page:
If you use the search bar to find this page, then select the result whose subheading is Monitoring.
In the toolbar of the Google Cloud console, select your Google Cloud project. For App Hub configurations, select the App Hub host project or management project.
In the dashboard toolbar, go to settings Settings, and then select View Version History. The version history panel opens.
Optional: To restore a previous version of a dashboard, select a version from the list and click the Revert button. The dashboard reloads and displays the previous version.
After you create a dashboard, you might determine that it needs modification to be more useful to you. For example, you might want to add or remove widgets, change the layout, or change how a widget displays data. Additionally, you might want to add labels to a dashboard, either to make it easier to find or to indicate the type of content on the dashboard.
Labels can help you locate dashboards based on the type of content
they display. For example, you might add the label prod to dashboards
that display information about production systems. Similarly, you might
add the label staging to indicate the dashboard displays information
about staging systems. Next, when you are listing your dashboards, you
can select a label to filter the list to
those dashboards that contain the selected label.
To add or remove user-defined labels to a dashboard, do the following:
In the Google Cloud console, go to the Dashboards page:
If you use the search bar to find this page, then select the result whose subheading is Monitoring.
To create a label and add it to your dashboard, in the Create a new label section, enter the name of the label in the textbox and then click Create and apply.
To list, edit, and delete your labels, click settings Manage labels.
After you create a dashboard, you can add filters and variables. Filters apply to all widgets on a dashboard. Variables apply to some widgets on the dashboard. Filters and variables can be helpful when you are troubleshooting. For example, you can use a filter so that the dashboard displays data only for a specific zone.
In the Google Cloud console, go to the Dashboards page:
If you use the search bar to find this page, then select the result whose subheading is Monitoring.
Locate and select the dashboard.
To add a dashboard-wide filter that applies only for your current session, use the dashboard's filter_list filter bar. For more information, see Temporary filters.
To add a dashboard-wide filter that is permanent, in the dashboard toolbar, go to settings Settings, and then select Manage Filters. For more information, see Create and manage variables and pinned filters.
To modify the widgets on a dashboard or the layout of the dashboard, do any of the following:
In the Google Cloud console, go to the Dashboards page:
If you use the search bar to find this page, then select the result whose subheading is Monitoring.
Optional: To add a widget to your dashboard, in the dashboard toolbar, click add Add widget, then select and configure the widget. To apply your changes to the dashboard, in the toolbar, click Apply. To discard your changes, click Cancel.
For more information, see the following pages:
Optional: To modify a widget, do one of the following:
Place your pointer on the widget to activate the toolbar, click edit Edit widget, and then update the widget. To apply your changes to the dashboard, in the toolbar, click Apply. To discard your changes, click Cancel.
You can change most settings for the widget, including the widget type. For example, to change a line chart to a stacked area chart, click Line chart arrow_drop_down and select Stacked area chart from the menu. For more information, see Change a widget's type.
Click settings Settings, click JSON, and then click JSON Editor. If you modify the JSON, then you must click Apply changes.
You can also access the JSON for a widget by editing the widget, in the widgets toolbar, and then clicking code View code.
Optional: To delete a widget, place your pointer on the widget to activate the toolbar, and then do one of the following:
To apply your changes to the dashboard, in the toolbar, click Apply. To discard your changes, click Cancel.
Optional: To reposition a widget, use your pointer to drag the widget by its header to a new location. To apply your changes to the dashboard, in the toolbar, click Apply. To discard your changes, click Cancel.
You can't reposition widgets when a dashboard is in grid mode.
Optional: To resize a widget, use your pointer to reposition the right-hand corner of the widget. To apply your changes to the dashboard, in the toolbar, click Apply. To discard your changes, click Cancel.
You can't resize widgets when a dashboard is in grid mode.
To save your modified dashboard, in the toolbar, click Save.
Deleting a dashboard that contains a chart for an alerting policy doesn't delete the alerting policies whose data was displayed on those charts. Therefore, you might receive notifications from those policies after the dashboard is deleted. For information about how to manage your policies, which you do from the Alerting page in the Google Cloud console, see Manage alerting policies.
To delete a custom dashboard, do the following:
In the Google Cloud console, go to the Dashboards page:
If you use the search bar to find this page, then select the result whose subheading is Monitoring.
You might have created a custom dashboard that others in your team or organization want to install in their projects. When you want to share a dashboard template, save it to your local system, and then move or copy the template to a shared location. For example, you might copy the template to a shared drive or to a source code repository like GitHub. Any individual with access to the stored location can install the dashboard into their Google Cloud projects.
To save a template of a custom dashboard to a JSON-formatted file that is stored on your local system, do the following:
In the Google Cloud console, go to the Dashboards page:
If you use the search bar to find this page, then select the result whose subheading is Monitoring.
Click download File Download:
The created file, which has the same name as the dashboard, contains a JSON representation of the dashboard. This file is only a template; it doesn't store time-series data.
When you are investigating a data anomaly, you might want another individual in your team or your organization to view the same data that you are viewing. For example, you might see an unexpected drop, or spike, in a performance metric and you want to consult with a teammate. In this scenario, you want your teammate to view the dashboard and its data.
For information about how to share a link to a dashboard, see Share a custom dashboard.
When you open a dashboard, it is configured with auto refresh disabled. The toolbar displays a toggle, , which indicates this state.
For your current session, to enable auto refresh, go to the toolbar and select Enable auto refresh.
To disable auto refresh after you've enabled it, go to the toolbar and select Disabled auto refresh.
For each Google Cloud project, Monitoring provides a per-user setting that controls whether modifications to custom dashboards are automatically saved. By default, Monitoring automatically saves modifications. That is, as you edit a custom dashboard, Monitoring periodically saves your changes to the dashboard. If you want to discard changes, then you can restore the original dashboard by using its version history.
You can configure Cloud Monitoring so that when you edit a dashboard, you must select the Save option before your changes are applied to the dashboard. Until you save the changes, your modifications apply only to the in-memory state. This configuration lets you modify custom dashboards and then choose to keep or discard those modifications.
To disable the auto-save feature, do the following:
To enable the auto-save feature, do the following:
In the toolbar, click the Autosave toggle until it is in the
On position.
The cloud_done Cloud Done icon indicates that Monitoring has saved your changes.
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Last updated 2026-06-09 UTC.
