Dashboard panel notes

[panda01]

At the last elasticon i saw a dashboard that puts kibana's to shame in terms of features if you ask me. One thing that really stood out to me was the ability to add arbitrary text to a panel, making it so you could have perhaps collaborative, or detailed notes about that panel.

I have very little idea as to how this would be implemented properly, design wise, but i thought it was good idea, and definitely think we should discuss.

[tbragin]

How is this different from the Markdown widget (see example below)?

[Bargs]

I have no idea if this is the kind of thing @panda01 is talking about, but one thing I've wanted recently is the ability to add annotations to a panel. For instance, it would be nice to be able to add additional text describing what a particular metric is in a data table, perhaps in a tool tip when you hover over the header or something. It can be really hard to capture the true meaning of a metric in just a word or two in a custom label. In past lives, I've seen people make decisions with data that they didn't truly understand because the labels were misleading.

[panda01]

@Bargs that's pretty much it. @tbragin i envision something like the dashboard title PR i have now, where it's just a field below the visualization, or next to it that you can put arbitrary notes into. I was thinking even markdown.

[tbragin]

Alright, so this must be the PR for that, correct? #7336

[panda01]

@tbragin nope. This would be another set of functionality, in addition to the title being changeable, let me put a gif together for what I'm envisioning.

[kobelb]

@tbragin is this something that we'd like for the Sharing team to continue discussing? I removed the 'discuss' label because it came up in a Mend-It Monday, and we were lacking enough detail to have a discussion with the team about it.

[tbragin]

@kobelb We can keep this open, but I don't know that it is high priority.

The way I think about this request is that it's asking for ad-hoc notes to overlay visualizations. However, I can see a lot of challenges with placement of these notes, such that they don't obscure the visualization. Presumably we'd have to place them at the top, side, or bottom. If so, currently, similar functionality can be accomplished by simply putting a markdown widget at the top, side or bottom of the visualization (as shown in the screenshot of this comment #7274 (comment)). To me, that feels like a good alternative.

[tbragin]

Note that I was originally confused about the point of this ticket, thinking it was about modifying the title of a visualization on the dashboard, because it was linked to a PR to modify the title. In reality, that enhancement (per-dashboard visualization titles) is tracked in this separate ticket: #3393

[ubhackn]

+1 for having an annotation per dashboard panel, separate from the Markdown type panel. Since the purpose is education about what the specific panel means, which you primarily need the first time or two you visit a dashboard, the information itself can be displayed as a modal, or even along with the Table, Request, Response, Statistics options at the bottom of each visualization. Default to not display it, but show if users click some Info indicator.

[ubhackn]

This image shows the need for annotation. Otherwise, I need to add it manually as a markdown, which is always visible, along with markdown's title too. Now it looks cluttered.

[mpaduada]

The ability to hide panel titles as described in #12563 would go a long way to making the Markdown visualization/widget a viable and uncluttered option to annotating dashboards. Frankly, if #12563 gets addressed, I think there's a higher priority on other formatting options for individual panels (say #10173 and #9243) compared to individual panel annotations.

[stacey-gammon]

We implemented hiding panel titles, and I think the rest of this request is covered by #2538

I would like to consolidate so am going to close this in favor of that one. Please feel free to re-open if anyone objects.