Simple explanation
A dashboard is a collection of visual panels giving an at-a-glance view of multiple searches/reports at once — this lesson covers how they're built.
Technical explanation
- Creating a dashboard: via the Dashboards section, giving it a title and choosing classic or Dashboard Studio (modern) editing experience.
- Adding a panel two ways: (1) saving a search directly AS a dashboard panel (creates an inline panel, embedding the search directly in that dashboard), or (2) adding an EXISTING saved report as a panel (creates a report-based panel, which stays linked to and updates alongside the original report).
- Inline vs. report-based panels — the key practical difference: an inline panel's search lives only within that dashboard; a report-based panel references a separate, reusable report — meaning a change to that underlying report automatically propagates to every dashboard panel using it, which is the RECOMMENDED approach when the same search needs to appear on multiple dashboards, since it avoids maintaining duplicate copies of the same search logic.
- Panel editing — after adding a panel, its visualization type, title, and formatting can be adjusted independently of the underlying search.
- Dashboard layout — panels can be arranged, resized, and organized into rows/sections for a coherent visual flow.
Synonyms / related terms
| Term | Means | |---|---| | Inline panel | A dashboard panel with its search embedded directly, not linked to a separate report | | Report-based panel | A dashboard panel referencing a separate, reusable saved report | | Dashboard Studio | Splunk's modern, more flexible dashboard-building interface |
Concept Check
"A team needs the exact same search to appear as a panel on five different dashboards, and wants any future change to that search logic to automatically apply everywhere it's used." Creating five separate INLINE panels, each with its own independent copy of the search, would NOT achieve this — a future change would have to be manually repeated five times. The correct approach is a single report-based panel pattern: save the search as one report, then add that same report as a panel to all five dashboards, so any edit to the report propagates everywhere automatically.
Interview-style Q&A
Q: When would an inline panel actually be the better choice over a report-based one? A: "When the search is genuinely one-off and specific to that single dashboard, with no expectation of reuse elsewhere. Creating a separate report object for something that will only ever live in one place adds a small amount of unnecessary indirection and object-management overhead, for no real reuse benefit."
Memory trick
"Inline is Local, Report-based is Linked" — the whole practical distinction, in four words, between the two ways a dashboard panel's search can exist.