Dashboards & Workbooks

Build Azure Monitor Workbooks for SLO tracking and capacity dashboards.

7 min readAzure Cloud EngineeringPlatform

Dashboards vs Workbooks

Azure Dashboards are simple pin-based views of metrics, logs, and resources. Workbooks are interactive, parameterized reports with rich visualizations. Use dashboards for at-a-glance monitoring and workbooks for deep analysis.

Feature	Azure Dashboard	Azure Monitor Workbook
Complexity	Simple pin-based	Rich interactive reports
Parameters	No	Yes (dropdowns, time pickers)
KQL queries	Basic	Advanced with branching
Visualization	Charts, metrics, links	Grids, charts, maps, tiles
Sharing	Export/import JSON	Gallery templates
Best for	Quick overview	Deep analysis, SLO tracking

Azure Dashboards

Create and export a dashboard


# Export a dashboard definition to a file
az portal dashboard export \
  --resource-group rg-monitoring \
  --name "AKS Overview" \
  --output-file ./aks-dashboard.json

# Import a dashboard from a file
az portal dashboard create \
  --resource-group rg-monitoring \
  --name "AKS Overview" \
  --input-path ./aks-dashboard.json

Dashboards are stored as JSON. You can version control them, share them between subscriptions, and create templates for standard monitoring views.

Workbooks Overview

Workbooks are interactive reports that combine KQL queries, metrics, parameters, and visualizations into a single document. They support branching logic, conditional rendering, and parameter-driven filtering.

Workbook ARM template structure


{
  "type": "Microsoft.Insights/workbooks",
  "apiVersion": "2022-04-01",
  "location": "eastus",
  "properties": {
    "displayName": "AKS SLO Dashboard",
    "category": "workbook",
    "dataSources": [
      {
        "type": "arg",
        "query": "InsightsMetrics | where Namespace == 'K8SNode' | summarize avgCPU = avg(Val) by Computer",
        "resources": ["/subscriptions/{sub-id}/resourceGroups/rg-monitoring/providers/Microsoft.OperationalInsights/workspaces/law-aks"]
      }
    ],
    "visualization": {
      "type": "metric",
      "metrics": [
        {
          "resourceMetadata": {},
          "name": "avgCPU",
          "aggregationType": 4
        }
      ]
    }
  }
}

Workbooks are stored as ARM resources. They can be deployed via ARM templates, Bicep, or Terraform for consistent monitoring across environments.

Workbook Components

Parameters — Dropdowns, text inputs, time pickers that filter workbook content
Query Steps — KQL or metric queries that feed visualizations
Visualizations — Charts, grids, tiles, maps, and metric plots
Links — Navigation to other workbooks or Azure resources
Groups — Collapsible sections for organizing content
Conditional Visibility — Show/hide elements based on parameter values

Building an SLO Workbook

SLO query for availability


// Calculate availability SLO (target: 99.9%)
let totalRequests = requests
  | where timestamp > ago(30d)
  | summarize Total = count();
let failedRequests = requests
  | where timestamp > ago(30d)
  | where success == false
  | summarize Failed = count();
totalRequests
| extend Availability = round((1.0 - todouble(Failed) / todouble(Total)) * 100, 3)
| extend SLOTarget = 99.9
| extend ErrorBudget = round(SLOTarget - Availability, 3)

This query calculates the actual availability over 30 days and compares it against the SLO target. The error budget shows how much more downtime is allowed before the SLO is breached.

SLO error budget burn rate


// Error budget burn rate (how fast are we consuming the error budget?)
let slo_target = 99.9;
let error_budget = 100 - slo_target;  // 0.1%
let window = 30d;
let total = requests
  | where timestamp > ago(window)
  | summarize Total = count();
let errors = requests
  | where timestamp > ago(window)
  | where success == false
  | summarize Errors = count();
total
| extend ActualErrorRate = round(todouble(Errors) / todouble(Total) * 100, 4)
| extend BurnRate = round(ActualErrorRate / error_budget, 2)
| extend BudgetRemaining = round(error_budget - ActualErrorRate, 4)

A burn rate of 1.0 means you are consuming the error budget at the expected rate. Above 1.0 means you are burning through the budget faster than planned.

Start with Azure Monitor Gallery templates

The Azure Monitor Gallery contains hundreds of pre-built workbook templates for AKS, VMs, networks, and services. Search the gallery in the Portal or deploy them via Bicep for immediate value.

Workbook Templates

Deploy a workbook from template


# List available workbook templates
az monitor app-insights component show \
  --app ai-payments-prod \
  --resource-group rg-payments \
  --query "ApplicationId" --output tsv

# Deploy a workbook via ARM template
az deployment group create \
  --resource-group rg-monitoring \
  --template-file workbook-aks-slo.json \
  --parameters workspaceId="/subscriptions/{sub-id}/resourceGroups/rg-monitoring/providers/Microsoft.OperationalInsights/workspaces/law-aks"

Workbooks can be deployed as part of infrastructure-as-code. Store workbook definitions in Git and deploy them alongside your monitoring infrastructure.

Workbooks support cross-resource queries

Unlike dashboards, workbooks can query data from multiple Log Analytics workspaces, Azure Monitor metrics, and Azure Resource Graph in a single view. This makes them ideal for enterprise-wide monitoring.

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