Grafana 2.1, released on August 4, 2015, introduces significant enhancements in dashboarding, authentication, and data source support, compelling all users to upgrade. The release features improvements to the Templating system, allowing for more dynamic dashboards through multi-value template variables and new functionalities like repeating rows and panels. It also enhances dashboard navigation with custom links and better local dashboard support, indexing JSON-saved dashboards alongside database dashboards. Authentication has been bolstered with LDAP support, basic HTTP authentication for the API, and an Auth Proxy, alongside a new "Read-only Editor" user role that allows editing without saving dashboards. Data source improvements include full support for InfluxDB 0.9, enhanced OpenTSDB template variable queries, and native support for KairosDB, while panel customization gains flexibility with regex-based color overrides, series stacking, and support for string values in Singlestat panels. These developments aim to enrich the user experience and expand Grafana's capabilities, reflecting user feedback and contributions from community members.