What is a Board?

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Overview

A Board is a workspace where you can save, organize, and share analysis components focused on a common objective. It is designed to help you efficiently monitor data, investigate issues, and collaborate with your team. With Boards, you can:

• Monitor service health: Track key metrics to quickly identify performance issues or anomalies.
• Investigate incidents: Save important queries for easy access during ongoing investigations.
• Share frequently used queries: Make common queries available to your team for faster troubleshooting.

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How Boards Work

Boards let you collect data from multiple sources and customize how it is presented.

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Panels

A Board can contain multiple panels, each displaying different types of data. Types of panels include:

• Queries: Visual representations of query results that make data analysis faster and easier, along with organized tables that display detailed query results.
• Service Level Objectives (SLOs): Metrics used to track and assess your service’s performance against defined goals.
• Text: Panels that provide context alongside your visualizations. Use them to explain data, highlight key insights, or link to related runbooks and playbooks. Text panels support standard Markdown syntax, allowing you to create rich, structured explanations directly on the Board.

When you open a Board, panels automatically refresh to show the latest data.

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Query Panel Defaults

Query panels on a Board can have default time ranges and granularities that control how data is displayed when the Board opens. Setting these defaults ensures that all queries start from a consistent time window and level of detail, making it easier for your team to interpret results quickly and reliably. Individual queries can still override the defaults when more targeted analysis is needed. If no explicit defaults are set, Honeycomb automatically applies the most commonly used time range and granularity across the Board’s query panels.

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Templates

To help you get started quickly, we offer pre-configured Board Templates for common use cases. Templates let you jump straight to analysis, saving you time that would otherwise be spent building Boards manually. To explore available templates, visit Using Board Templates. Whether you start with a template or create a Board yourself, all Boards are fully customizable.

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Tags

Tags help you stay organized as your Team creates more Boards. Use them to group related Boards by project, team, service, or any other category that fits your workflow. Tags make it easier to filter and find the Boards you need, especially in shared or busy environments. Because they’re flexible and customizable, you can organize Boards in the way that works best for you.

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Access and Permissions

Any team member can create a Board. By default, Boards are public, meaning everyone on your Honeycomb Team can access and edit them. Boards can also be restricted to the creator or a specific group of Team members. When restricted, only those added as collaborators can add or edit panels. Team owners always have access to Boards, regardless of restrictions. To learn more about Board access and permissions, visit Managing Team Permissions.