Grafana PDF Report - Create, Generate, and Schedule

In this section, we will walk through the steps to create a visual PDF report from a Grafana dashboard. This is one of the popular reports generated using Skedler. We will detail each step along the way to create a professional quality report. 

In the Reports Dashboard, click Create Report button on the top right and select Visual Report.

If you are creating your first report and/or if you are connecting to a new Grafana datasource, click the Connect to Data Source button.

If you are creating your second or subsequent report, click Select Data Source if you have already connected your Elasticsearch Kibana data source.

If you are creating your first report you would see the option to choose Elasticsearch or Grafana data source. Click on Grafana.

Fill in your Grafana URL and authentication data to connect Skedler to your Grafana. Click Test and Save.

After connecting your data source, select your data source. 

• Select the Grafana datasource. After that, select which Organization/dashboard you want to load. 
• Leave the default load time.  
• Leave the theme as Default so that Skedler will automatically use the appropriate theme.  
• Scroll down to choose Custom Layout and the time filter. 
• You can either choose Dashboard Time Window or use Skedler to choose the required time window/filter for querying data.  

Click Save.

You can customize the report theme, layout and the time filter used for generating the PDF report.

After the design page loads, in the top left corner, you can rename the report to whatever name you would like.

You can choose a default template from the Report Templates tab or you can choose your own custom template in the My Templates tab and apply them to your report. This includes everything from customizing the header and footer, to even your own logo. You can add a new page and apply the template to the page.

You can add and edit the header and footer on the top and bottom of the page

You can use this panel at the bottom of the page to add new pages, rearrange them, and duplicate or delete them.

On the left panel, you can see and select charts, templates, texts, elements, and images. The Grafana charts will automatically populate in the charts section on the left side. Simply drag and drop them on the canvas page to add them.

When designing the PDF report, you will not see the actual data from the charts, but a sample mockup of the chart.  Actual data will be rendered when the report is generated.

Charts must be saved as visualizations in the Kibana dashboard to generate PDF reports using Skedler. Skedler does not support ad-hoc charts from Kibana dashboard.  Ad-hoc charts that are not saved as visualizations will be shown as undefined charts in Skedler.  

When you drag and drop a chart, the size that the chart/graph pops up in which we call it “True Size”, the exact size of the chart in the Kibana/Grafana dashboard, which is automatically set to work perfectly with your dashboard data so oftentimes there’s no need to resize. But if needed, you may quickly arrange and resize them as well.

You can even add text between charts.  Feel free to customize the report to your needs. 

Click Next to schedule your report. 

You can schedule the report in a variety of ways. Here, you can also select a variety of export options such as PDF, PNG, HTML, Excel/CSV. Select PDF to generate a PDF visual report. Click Next.

After scheduling your report, the next step is to distribute them. Choose if you want to create an email notification channel or Slack notification channel.

Fill in the respective information for the email channel or slack channel, and click Save on the bottom right corner. 

Now in the Distribute section, you will find the notification channel you just created.

In the next UI, you can select which notification channels you want to use to distribute the report and which team members/contacts it will be emailed to. You can customize who receives the report, subject, and message that accompanies the report.

Lastly, click the Done button on the top right corner to finish creating your visual report.

After the report is created, you can download it by clicking on the PDF icon.  When you click it for the first time, it will automatically generate the report and download it to your computer.   Subsequently, to regenerate the report, click on Generate Now icon or choose Generate Now from the … drop-down menu.