---
title: "GitHub Actions workflow | Grafana Labs"
description: "A step-by-step walkthrough of the deployment workflow"
---

> For a curated documentation index, see [llms.txt](/llms.txt). For the complete documentation index, see [llms-full.txt](/llms-full.txt).

## Complete workflow

You can deploy dashboards with a single `terraform apply`. But if someone still has to remember to run that command after every change, you haven’t removed the human bottleneck. Now you’ll automate the full dashboard lifecycle with GitHub Actions.

This workflow generates and deploys your dashboards. It runs in two cases: when you open or update a pull request, and when commits are pushed to main. On a pull request, it runs generate and plan to preview the changes. On a push to main, it also runs apply to deploy them.

YAML ![Copy code to clipboard](/media/images/icons/icon-copy-small-2.svg) Copy

```yaml
name: Deploy Grafana Dashboards

on:
  push:
    branches: [main]
  pull_request:

jobs:
  deploy:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    steps:
      - uses: actions/checkout@v3

      - name: Set up Go
        uses: actions/setup-go@v5
        with:
          go-version: '1.24'

      - name: Generate dashboard JSON
        run: go run main.go

      - name: Setup Terraform
        uses: hashicorp/setup-terraform@v1

      - name: Terraform Init
        run: terraform init

      - name: Terraform Plan
        run: terraform plan -input=false -no-color

      - name: Terraform Apply
        if: github.ref == 'refs/heads/main'
        run: terraform apply -auto-approve
        env:
          GRAFANA_AUTH: ${{ secrets.GRAFANA_TOKEN }}
```

## Step breakdown

Each step in the workflow handles one stage of the generate-plan-apply pipeline.

| Step               | Purpose                                      |
|--------------------|----------------------------------------------|
| **Checkout**       | Access your repository code                  |
| **Set up Go**      | Install the language runtime for SDK code    |
| **Generate JSON**  | Run your SDK code to produce dashboard files |
| **Terraform Init** | Download the Grafana provider                |
| **Plan/Apply**     | Preview or deploy dashboard changes          |

The `if: github.ref == 'refs/heads/main'` condition on the apply step gates deployment: plan runs on every push, but apply runs only when changes land on `main`. Pull requests get a plan preview without deploying anything.

## Alternative CI systems

You can adapt this to other CI systems (GitLab CI, CircleCI, Jenkins) by translating the same five steps. Your Foundation SDK code and Terraform configuration stay the same regardless of which CI tool runs them.