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Grafana Cloud Enterprise Open source
Last reviewed: July 17, 2026

Azure Data Explorer annotations

Annotations overlay event markers on graphs. Use an Azure Data Explorer query to add annotations that mark points in time across your dashboard panels.

Before you begin

Before you create annotations, ensure you have the following:

Create an annotation query

To add an annotation query that uses Azure Data Explorer data:

  1. Navigate to Dashboard settings > Annotations.
  2. Click Add annotation query.
  3. Enter a name for the annotation query.
  4. Select the Azure Data Explorer data source.
  5. Write a Kusto query that returns the required columns, as described in the following section.

Query requirements

An annotation query can return up to three columns per row. Because annotation rendering is expensive, limit the number of rows returned.

Return the following columns:

  • A column with the datetime type for the annotation time. This column is required.
  • A column aliased as Text or text for the annotation text.
  • A column aliased as Tags or tags for the annotation tags. Return a comma-separated string of tags, such as 'tag1,tag2'.

Examples

The following query returns annotations with text and tags from a log table:

kusto 
MyLogs
| where $__timeFilter(Timestamp)
| project Timestamp, Text=Message, Tags="tag1,tag2"

The text and tags columns are optional. The following query returns annotations with only a time and text column:

kusto 
MyLogs
| where $__timeFilter(Timestamp)
| project Timestamp, Text=Message

For more information about adding and using annotations, refer to Annotations.