Copy dashboards from Dashboards with Grafana to Azure Managed Grafana

Azure Monitor Dashboards with Grafana provides an in‑portal Grafana experience optimized for Azure Monitor and managed Prometheus data.

For many teams, that simplicity is exactly what they need.

As observability practices mature, teams often need more than visualization: broader data source support, stronger security controls, and advanced workflows like Azure Managed Grafana MCP. Until now, moving dashboards from Dashboards with Grafana into Azure Managed Grafana often meant recreating them by hand or exporting JSON, extra friction when teams want to move faster.

The new Copy to Managed Grafana experience removes that friction.

Introducing Copy to Managed Grafana from Azure Monitor Dashboards with Grafana

Why a copy experience was needed

Dashboards with Grafana and Azure Managed Grafana serve complementary roles.

Dashboards with Grafana focuses on:

• Fast, zero‑setup visualization
• Tight integration with Azure Monitor and Prometheus
• An embedded experience directly inside the Azure portal

Azure Managed Grafana extends that foundation with:

• Full Grafana workflows, including alerts, reporting, and automation
• Support for additional data sources and plugins
• Enterprise‑grade security features such as private endpoints and managed identity
• Cross‑team reuse through folders, APIs, and Role Based Access Controls

Historically, teams that outgrew Dashboards with Grafana didn’t have a simple, in‑product way to bring their dashboards forward, so continuing in a more advanced Grafana environment required extra manual steps.

The goal is simple: copy dashboards to Azure Managed Grafana as needs grow—while continuing to use Dashboards with Grafana for day‑to‑day work.

Introducing “Copy to Managed Grafana”

Customers can now copy dashboards from Dashboards with Grafana into Azure Managed Grafana directly from the Azure portal—without changing the original dashboard.

This feature is:

• In‑context – start from your dashboard in Dashboards with Grafana
• Seamless – no exports or re‑creation
• Non‑disruptive – keep using the source dashboard while you adopt Managed Grafana

The flow is straightforward:

• Select “Copy to Managed Grafana” from your dashboard in Dashboards with Grafana. This feature doesn’t work on built-in dashboards, so you would have to save a copy of built-in Dashboards before you can copy those.
• Choose an existing Azure Managed Grafana workspace or create a new one
• Complete the copy and continue working in a full Grafana environment, making data connections where needed

You can easily copy to an existing Azure Managed Grafana instance or create a new one

Because it appears where teams already build dashboards, the option is easy to find when it becomes relevant.

Advanced capabilities, like additional data sources, alerts, and folder organization, are configured after copying, so teams can adopt them when they’re ready.

This keeps the transition predictable and avoids surprises.

Dashboards with Grafana is the fastest way to visualize Azure Monitor data with Grafana. When teams need more control, scale, or extensibility, Azure Managed Grafana is the natural next step, without forcing you to stop using Dashboards with Grafana.

Together, they form a single observability journey:

• Start quickly with Dashboards with Grafana
• Copy dashboards into Azure Managed Grafana when you need more capabilities
• Enjoy end to end observability within the Azure ecosystem as requirements evolve

You don’t have to trade speed today for flexibility later.

Learn more by reading the doc: Copy an Azure Monitor dashboard to Azure Managed Grafana - Azure Monitor | Microsoft Learn