Though this kind of clashes with Godzilla's Graph color change suggestion
http://www.zabbix.com/forum/showthread.php?t=3453

I do see some usefulness in this, better than a blank Graph, specially in Item's Graphs that have dependencies on other Item's

Ex: Graph for an Oracle DB current sessions -> "IP Connection not possible" or "Server is down" depending on existing Triggers

I don't really think it clashes with Godzilla's suggestion. I was not thinking about using triggers, although that might also be a good idea. My suggestion is more like a system for manually adding comments that might be useful when looking at trends for capacity planning etc. I made a simple example, which I'll try to attach.

I really think this kind of functionality could be very beneficial to Zabbix and could really make it superior to other monitoring tools.
Maybe we could add the ability to create a sort of "tag" associated with a date and time and a host ?
Create a tag could be made from a page dedicated to the TAGs or from the events page -> That way, you could add a tag when an event occurs.
Then, for any graph associated with the host we see this TAG.

My 2 cents.
Simon

Is this been considered for a next 1.9.x release?

Thanks

Yes this would be very useful and give Zabbix something most competitors do not have. Enabling it to build more business intelligence into the technical monitoring.
For instance, it would be very useful if application deliveries (along with version number) could appear in performance graphs.

Are features considered for the next release by votes? The comments-on-graph feature is incredibly desirable, just completed a maintenance operation for performance and our Zabbix monitors immediately started showing results - it would be very useful to add this annotation for future reference!

Votes are considered. You could also suggest how you think it should behave in detail. That'd be helpful.

I like it very much. Also we may consider implementing a new operation, "add a label". In this case, for example, application version changes could be created automatically by Zabbix itself.

The annotations should be assigned at:

• graph level
• host level
• group level

or other abstraction levels.

But to have options to convert the annotations between levels or display all the annotations no matter of level. A sample: we could do some tuning on a db server and we mark the change on one of the graphs for that db server. If we are reviewing the http servers graphs and we see a load change to be able to make visible all annotations so we see that the load change on http was because of the change on the db server.

That's just a sample but we are currently using Nagios/Cacti and I am looking for a replacement tool to have this features.

When working either on equipments or at application level there are a lot of changes made and is hard to track what change has made the impact on graphs. Using this will help a lot. I am currently using this kind of feature on Google Analytics and is very useful. Is shame none of monitoring tools I checked doesn't have this kind of things.

As well some ways to share the annotations between groups (I am not sure if groups on Zabbix are hierarchically based to share base on hierarchy; I am not yet a Zabbix user ). Per my previous sample: so I am able to see the db group annotations on http group graphs.

I would like to be able to specify what type of user is able to view/edit/delete the graphs (sample: customer accounts to not be able to do certain things on annotations).

this feature would be amasing, so you can annotate events, changes so you do not have to remember them in our head.

very useful, please implement.

Also upvote from here. It would be really good to be able to have an API which could be used to annotate timeline for example when a new build has been updated into production.

For sure, annotation should be mapped not only to graph, but to higher levels, as discussed above. Graphs are changing, but these note should stay in DB and should be visible on other places...

An interesting idea would be to have kind of "user input" item, which means the user can enter for a precise date&time some text (somehow similar with a Character item). This text could be the label/comment to be displayed on graphs.

Additional to this idea is to have some items (otherwise not having input from user but rather from host monitored) acting similar with the "user input" items. A sample item could be "service restarted" (based on uptime got from the service monitored), so on the graphs to be displayed a label/comment: "Service restarted".

Of course, we should still have the option to share the "user input" between all host graphs / host groups graphs and be available as well for proper permission filtering.

Btw, what do you think guys, should I raise the idea with "service restarted" kind of items raising labels on graphs as a separated Feature Request ?

"event timeline" (or showing events on graphs) is ZBXNEXT-414

Thanks richlv, I see a good connection with your "event timeline".

Since my task was a duplitcate to this one, here is my recomendation how to implement this feature.

This could be implemented by adding a separate tab called "Date Markers" (or whatever) and on that tab you will be able to add a new date marker by giving it a:

• name
• selecting a date
• selecting the hosts/groups to which this marker applies

The graphs should also have a check-box somewhere in the interface to enable/disable the display of those markers.

I don't think there is a need to assign markers on graph level, since when you change something on a particular server, the whole server is impacted and it should be possible to hide markers (as suggested in the previouse sentence) on graphs, so if a change didn't have any impact on that graph you can always hide it.

Bump. Can we raise the priority of this? There are a number of other services already offering this and it is a very useful triage feature.

Just for reference: https://www.zabbix.org/wiki/Docs/comment_for_logstash

This feature would be veeery useful.

Would be very, very nice to have.

Hi, this is a must guys! Please do it!
This is a pure living log book that will allow monitoring teams to have this live log book of their monitored systems.

I was surprised to find out there is no such thing, I mean, it simply must be there.
You already have events implemented, right?
Have you considered a lightweigh implementation, like - user-triggered events with comments?

more visualisation for inspiration : http://piwik.org/docs/annotations/

Holy crap! This Piwik is awesome ! That's precisely what we need. Because Zabbix monitoring is about events and performance monitoring. It is a must to add notes for certain graphs, for certain events. Note that these coments would only show up if they belong to the selected data!

This is a very long request... already years. any roadmap including this feature? Can product owner prioritize it ?

vapochilled,

you can find the roadmap here: http://zabbix.org/wiki/Docs/roadmap

(Co-)sponsoring development is the preferred way to prioritize a ZBXNEXT

vapochilled, what okkuv9xh said - but keep in mind that zabbix team has stopped publishing official roadmap, the linked one is unofficial

Was so excited when you put this into a sprint, so sad now you removed it

Marker on timeline is very important for us, we hesitate to change solution only cause of this feature. I hope Zabbix team will add this feature soon.

For completeness:
1. It would be great to have this new feature working tightly with actions, allowing to "Add comment" on some event triggering. There, one should have to configure the string comment (as usual with actions) and a target (as usual with actions). Here, the target could be a graph, a host group, a host or a host item.
2. I understand all descendant graphs (also those cretaed using "Latest data" section items) will show assigned messages/comments to their parents, too (optimally, selectable inline).
3. As a fine tuning feature, it would be desirable to be able to select comment color and/or icon, allowing fast visual diagnosis.

ZBXNEXT-2134 suggests showing acknowledgement comments on a graph. We already have everything for that, that could be the first step of the feature, visualization.

I agree with @dimir that ZBXNEXT-2134 would be a very nice first step!

What amazing feature. Hope to see it available soon.

Hi Guys,

I think that with the evolution of Zabbix and the idea of using dashboards as the source/core for scheduled reports (in PDF), it is VERY relevant to revisit this topic to offer more options and features to Zabbix users/customers.

One way we can benefit from this may align with the ideas here: http://speakingppt.com/10-rules-for-graph-annotations/ & https://www.storytellingwithdata.com/blog/2018/1/22/88-annotated-line-graphs ...  in this case, the comments would be VISIBLE on the graph itself (optional?).

So ... the reports (in PDF) will give users and decision-makers all the info we've got in Zabbix (Comments/descriptions on triggers? Acknowledged comments? Graph comments? Item descriptions? Host descriptions? Macros? TAGs ? Etc, etc).

[]s,

Luciano

A "label" can be placed when a trigger is activated. It can be more clear than the current dotted-line of the triggers.