Redash: Event annotations (deploys, downtimes, etc) as horizontal bars on graphs

[arikfr]

[eshel]

Event annotations can be generalized to "X Axis Annotations", for any X axis data type (dates, numbers, categories, whatever).
While we're at it, Y axis annotations can be useful as well. Would be useful to visualize "red lines" clearly (values too high or too low).

[dovahcrow]

+1

[davismtl]

+1
Google Analytics integrates this really well and might be worth using as inspiration.

When there is an anomaly on a chart, everyone on our team ends up having to look up the cause and then usually forget and have to look up a few more times in the future.

Stats are most useful when explanations are accompanied.

Implementation ideas:

• Perhaps allow to add to 1 chart or to all.
• Or allow to enable annotation on a per chart basis.
• Allowing to group events into categories could be useful too (e.g. tags, categories or keywords). This could avoid having too many annotations if you are part of a big org (e.g. Mozilla).

[mohitrao]

+1 be able to drop a pin on a point of a chart and add a note or a url for commentary

[JMbw]

+1

[benmiroglio]

+1

[armandoFanbot]

+1

[davismtl]

In terms of what this would look like, we have two good sources of inspiration. Mozilla uses Google Analytics and Amplitude which both have annotations.

Comparison

• Google Analytics puts them under the chart as a list sorted by date in a collapsible menu
• Amplitude puts vertical bars on the charts to show that there is an annotation for that date

[thoechsmann]

+1

[arikfr]

Some notes from discussing this feature during a team call:

• The idea is that annotation are a comment anchored to some point in the chart (at the call we discussed X axis anchoring, but reviewing comments from issue, I see that Y axis anchoring definitely makes sense too).
• Annotation are a form of comment that is anchored to some point in the visualization. They will be persisted forever, and if not visible from the chart (because the point is no longer in view) then they can be seen from the "comments" section.
• As a follow up feature, we can implement unanchored comments, but should start from annotations.

[dlevison]

Supporting of 'Multiple Annotations' would be great for adding deployments and system changes markers to the graphs:
https://plot.ly/python/text-and-annotations/#multiple-annotations