New in Grafana 8.5: updated panels, new RBAC features, simplified reporting, and more!

Grafana 8.5 introduces a range of enhancements focused on improving usability, data visualization, and security, featuring updated panels, new role-based access control (RBAC) options, and simplified reporting features. Notable updates include support for Atom feeds in the News panel, scrollable bar gauge panels, and a new transformation for structuring data in a matrix format. The version also debuts an easy "Explore to dashboard" query workflow, and an expanded navigation menu to streamline user experience. Enhanced tracing functionality now allows linking traces to Splunk logs, while alerting capabilities have been improved with grouped alert rules and fine-grained RBAC, which extends to dashboards, folders, and annotations. The update also introduces better software update notifications and a revamped reporting UI, making report creation more intuitive. Grafana 8.5 aims to provide a more powerful, user-friendly experience for both free and enterprise users, while encouraging community engagement through events such as GrafanaCONline 2022.