Automate dashboard provisioning with CI/CD

Fri, 03 Apr 2026 12:35:46 -0500

Automate dashboard provisioning with CI/CD

Introduction

Managing Grafana dashboards manually can be inefficient and error-prone. As you saw in the Getting Started guide, we can define dashboards using strongly typed code with the Grafana Foundation SDK. We can then commit them to version controls, and automatically deploy them using GitHub Actions.

This guide walks through:

Generating a Grafana dashboard as code
Formatting it for Kubernetes-style deployment
Using GitHub Actions to deploy the dashboard
Checking if the dashboard exists and updating it if needed

By the end, every change to your dashboard code will be automatically created or updated in your Grafana instance without manual intervention.

You can find the full example source code in the intro-to-foundation-sdk repository.

1. Generating the dashboard JSON

Before deploying a dashboard, we need to define it in code using the Grafana Foundation SDK. We ran through an example of this in the Getting Started guide, however, in order to comply with the Kubernetes resource compatible API that Grafana exposes, we’ll make some changes to the code to output the dashboard JSON in the appropriate format.

package main

import (
	"encoding/json"
	"log"
	"os"

	"github.com/grafana/grafana-foundation-sdk/go/cog"
	"github.com/grafana/grafana-foundation-sdk/go/common"
	"github.com/grafana/grafana-foundation-sdk/go/dashboard"
)

type DashboardWrapper struct {
	APIVersion string              `json:"apiVersion"`
	Kind       string              `json:"kind"`
	Metadata   Metadata            `json:"metadata"`
	Spec       dashboard.Dashboard `json:"spec"`
}

type Metadata struct {
	Name string `json:"name"`
}

func main() {
	builder := dashboard.NewDashboardBuilder("My Dashboard").
		Uid("my-dashboard").
		Tags([]string{"generated", "foundation-sdk", "go"}).
		Refresh("5m").
		Time("now-1h", "now").
		Timezone(common.TimeZoneBrowser).
		WithRow(dashboard.NewRowBuilder("Overview"))

	dashboard, err := builder.Build()
	if err != nil {
		log.Fatalf("failed to build dashboard: %v", err)
	}

	dashboardWrapper := DashboardWrapper{
		APIVersion: "dashboard.grafana.app/v1beta1",
		Kind:       "Dashboard",
		Metadata: Metadata{
			Name: *dashboard.Uid,
		},
		Spec: dashboard,
	}

	dashboardJson, err := json.MarshalIndent(dashboardWrapper, "", "  ")
	if err != nil {
		log.Fatalf("failed to marshal dashboard: %v", err)
	}

	err = os.WriteFile("dashboard.json", dashboardJson, 0644)
	if err != nil {
		log.Fatalf("failed to write dashboard to file: %v", err)
	}

	log.Printf("Dashboard JSON:\n%s", dashboardJson)
}

import { DashboardBuilder, RowBuilder } from '@grafana/grafana-foundation-sdk/dashboard';
import * as fs from 'fs';

// Generate the dashboard JSON
const dashboard = new DashboardBuilder('My Dashboard')
  .uid('my-dashboard')
  .tags(['generated', 'foundation-sdk', 'typescript'])
  .refresh('5m')
  .time({ from: 'now-1h', to: 'now' })
  .timezone('browser')
  .withRow(new RowBuilder('Overview'))
  .build();

// Convert to Kubernetes-style format
const dashboardWrapper = {
  apiVersion: "dashboard.grafana.app/v1beta1",
  kind: "Dashboard",
  metadata: {
    name: dashboard.uid!
  },
  spec: dashboard
};

// Save the formatted JSON to a file
const dashboardJSON = JSON.stringify(dashboardWrapper, null, 2);
fs.writeFileSync('dashboard.json', dashboardJSON, 'utf8');

console.log(`Dashboard JSON:\n${}`);

This script:

Generates a Grafana dashboard JSON file
Wraps it in a Kubernetes-style API format (apiVersion, kind, metadata, spec)
Saves it as dashboard.json for deployment

2. Automating deployment with GitHub Actions

Next, we’ll set up GitHub Actions to: Extract the dashboard name from dashboard.json Check if the dashboard already exists within our Grafana instance Update it if it does, create it if it doesn’t

Note
The following GitHub Action configuration assumes you are using a Go-based dashboard generator. If you are using one of the other languages that the Foundation SDK supports, please modify the Generate Dashboard JSON step accordingly.

.github/workflows/deploy-dashboard.yml

name: Deploy Grafana Dashboard

on:
  push:
    branches:
      - main

jobs:
  deploy:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest

    steps:
      - name: Checkout code
        uses: actions/checkout@v3

      - name: Set up Go
        uses: actions/setup-go@v5
        with:
          go-version: 1.24.6

      - name: Verify Go version
        run: go version

      - name: Download and Extract grafanactl
        run: |
          curl -L -o grafanactl-x86_64.tar.gz "https://github.com/grafana/grafanactl/releases/download/${{ vars.GRAFANACTL_VERSION }}/grafanactl_Linux_x86_64.tar.gz"
          tar -xzf grafanactl-x86_64.tar.gz
          chmod +x grafanactl
          sudo mv grafanactl /usr/local/bin/grafanactl

      - name: Generate Dashboard JSON
        working-directory: ./github-actions-example
        run: go run main.go

      - name: Deploy Dashboard with grafanactl
        env:
          GRAFANA_SERVER: ${{ vars.GRAFANA_SERVER }}
          GRAFANA_STACK_ID: ${{ vars.GRAFANA_STACK_ID }}
          GRAFANA_TOKEN: ${{ secrets.GRAFANA_TOKEN }}
        run: |
          if [ -f dashboard.json ]; then
            echo "dashboard.json exists, deploying dashboard."
            grafanactl resources push dashboards --path ./dashboard.json
          else
            echo "dashboard.json does not exist."
            exit 1
          fi
        working-directory: ./github-actions-example

3. Explaining this GitHub Action

This GitHub Action automates the deployment of a Grafana dashboard using the Foundation SDK and the grafanactl CLI tool.

1. Checkout and set up Go

The first few steps:

Check out the repository to access the project code.
Install Go 1.24.6 using the actions/setup-go action.
Verify Go is properly installed.

2. Download and install `grafanactl`

This step downloads the grafanactl CLI from GitHub using a version defined in vars.GRAFANACTL_VERSION. It unpacks the tarball, makes it executable, and moves it to a location in the system PATH.

3. Generate the dashboard JSON

Runs the dashboard generator (main.go) from the ./github-actions-example directory. This should produce a dashboard.json file that contains the Grafana dashboard definition.

4. Deploy the dashboard with `grafanactl`

If dashboard.json exists, it is deployed to your Grafana instance using:

grafanactl resources push dashboards --path ./dashboard.json

This command authenticates against Grafana using the following environment variables:

GRAFANA_SERVER: Your Grafana instance URL
GRAFANA_STACK_ID: Your Grafana stack ID
GRAFANA_TOKEN: A Grafana service account token with sufficient permissions

GitHub variables and secrets used

These are configured in your repository under Settings → Security → Secrets and variables → Actions:

vars.GRAFANACTL_VERSION: Version of grafanactl to install
vars.GRAFANA_SERVER: The URL of your Grafana instance
vars.GRAFANA_STACK_ID: The stack ID in Grafana
secrets.GRAFANA_TOKEN: Grafana API token

This action ensures that every push to main will regenerate and deploy your latest dashboard definition to Grafana.

Why automate this?

Automating Grafana dashboard deployment eliminates the need for manual dashboard creation and updates, ensuring that dashboards remain consistent across environments. By defending dashboards as code and managing them through CI/CD such as GitHub Actions, we gain full version control, making it easy to track changes over time and roll back if needed. This also prevents duplication, as the workflow intelligently checks whether a dashboard exists before deciding to create or update it. With this fully automated CI/CD pipeline, developers can focus on improving their dashboards rather than manually uploading JSON files to Grafana.

Conclusion

By integrating the Grafana Foundation SDK with GitHub Actions, we have successfully automated the entire lifecycle of Grafana dashboards. This setup allows us to define dashboards programmatically, convert them into a Kubernetes-compatible format, and deploy them automatically. With each push to the repository, the workflow ensures that dashboards are either created or updated as needed. This not only improves the efficiency but also guarantees that all deployed dashboards are always in sync with the latest code changes, reducing manual effort and potential errors.

Foundation SDK on Grafana Labs

Automate dashboard provisioning with CI/CD

Automate dashboard provisioning with CI/CD

Introduction

1. Generating the dashboard JSON

2. Automating deployment with GitHub Actions

3. Explaining this GitHub Action

1. Checkout and set up Go

2. Download and install grafanactl

3. Generate the dashboard JSON

4. Deploy the dashboard with grafanactl

GitHub variables and secrets used

Why automate this?

Conclusion

2. Download and install `grafanactl`

4. Deploy the dashboard with `grafanactl`