Grafana 11.3: What's New, Release History & Support Lifecycle

What Is New in Grafana 11.3

How do Scenes-powered dashboards change the editing experience in Grafana 11.3?

Scenes-powered dashboards are now generally available and introduce a cleaner separation between view and edit modes.

• View mode hides most editing controls, giving a less cluttered canvas for end-users.
• Edit mode brings back panel-adding and setting options, making it faster for developers to modify dashboards.
• The time range picker and template variables now stick to the top of the page as you scroll, a highly requested usability improvement.
• A new tz URL parameter lets you share a dashboard with a specific timezone, e.g. /d/abcd?tz=America/New_York, ensuring consistent time interpretation.

Can I trigger API calls directly from canvas elements in Grafana 11.3?

Yes, the new Canvas actions let you attach one-click API calls to any canvas element.

• Enable the feature with the vizActions toggle in grafana.ini or via the UI.
• In the panel editor, select a canvas element and use the "Data links and actions" section to add an action.
• Choose "One-click" to fire the API immediately on click; the first action in the list gets this behavior.
• Drag-and-drop actions in the tooltip to reorder their display.

# Example: enable canvas actions
[feature_toggles]
vizActions = true

What does the default installation of Explore Logs mean for my monitoring workflow?

Explore Logs is now pre-installed, so you can explore logs without manual plugin setup.

• The plugin appears alongside Explore Metrics, giving a unified UI for logs and metrics.
• It is GA in Grafana Cloud and now automatically installed on OSS and Enterprise instances via the preinstall configuration flag.
• Use the standard Explore pane to filter, search, and visualize log spikes without writing queries.

How has alerting been simplified in Grafana 11.3?

Alert rule creation now offers a streamlined query and condition step.

• The default UI shows a single query and a single condition, reducing visual noise.
• Switch to "Advanced options" for multi-query or expression-heavy alerts.
• Role-based access control for notifications (contact points, mute timings, templates) is in public preview for Enterprise and Cloud.
• Recording rules can be created for Grafana-managed alerts when the grafanaManagedRecordingRules flag is enabled, improving dashboard performance.

What new admin tools help communicate and secure Grafana instances in 11.3?

Admins can now publish announcement banners and configure LDAP via the UI, plus plugins can use RBAC.

• Announcement banners (public preview) appear at the top of the UI; enable with the notificationBanner toggle and configure under Admin → General → Announcement Banner.
• LDAP setup is now a UI wizard; enable the ssoSettingsLDAP toggle to avoid manual config file edits and restarts.
• Plugins can define custom roles in plugin.json, granting permissions to Viewer, Editor, Admin, or Grafana Admin by default.
• Subfolder creation no longer requires extra permissions - users with Edit or Admin rights on a folder can create nested subfolders.