Grafana 8.5 introduces a range of enhancements aimed at improving usability, data visualization, and security. Key updates include support for Atom feeds in the News panel, enhanced scrolling capabilities in the bar gauge panel, and new transformations such as template variable substitution and data grouping into matrix formats. The release also simplifies the process of adding queries to dashboards and features an expanded navigation menu. New tracing functionalities, such as linking traces to Splunk logs, and improvements in alerting, including group names for managed alerts and refined role-based access control (RBAC) for alerting, dashboards, and annotations, are also part of this update. Additionally, Grafana 8.5 offers better software update notifications and a revamped reporting UI to ease report creation. The update is available for download or via Grafana Cloud, and the community is encouraged to engage with the new features and provide feedback.