Feature request: default query on Explore

[lauren-hinge]

Problem

When users arrive at the Explore view, they're presented with this:

Most of the time, I base what I'm about to query off of seeing existing results of the VL I'm querying -- to remember or get a feel for the fields and formats it contains.

So, I always start with (and recommend people to start with): *.

With that in place, suddenly the logs view actually has logs! It'd be nice if users' first impression with this datasource didn't have to start with learning that tip.

 

Feature

Honestly, I'd be fine with * as the default everywhere, but it may be nice to be able to configure the default query AND default time range for that query.

That way, on particularly data-heavy VL's, you can reduce load by setting the default to 5 minutes, or a well-optimized stream query.

 

Alternative

Not sure what Grafana makes available, but an alternative approach may be to be defining the behavior on empty query, rather than on explore pageload 🤷‍♀️.

[arturminchukov]

@lauren-hinge I think it's quite similar to this issue, where we can add such tips/suggests. What do you think?

[lauren-hinge]

@arturminchukov I see it as separate tbh. Tooltips and help are great, but it's still a how-to users need to go through, in between them and seeing logs.

I'm imagining a flow like:

• they click on the VL datasource they're looking for
• they see logs load
• they click on a log, see it's from container: service-1
• they click on the + button on that field, and now their query is container:="service-1"

They get to where they're going just by clicking, and ideally, they'll learn to recognize and start using that query format along the way.

I've found this to be a pretty generalizable flow for using and learning log query platforms. Showing them logs, as provided by a default query, would just jumpstart that process!

It's subtle thing, and definitely a nice-to-have. But I do see it as separate from in-UI docs!