Playlists not working in grafana2?

[costimuraru]

Playlists do not work for me in grafana 2 (Grafana version: 2.0.0-prebeta1, commit: fa2e074, build date: 2015-03-10 14:52:53)

Steps to reproduce:

1. Select Playlist in the dashboards drop down menu
2. Select desired dashboards (query or star dashboards)
3. Click "Start"

Result:
The controls presented in the image below appear, but nothing else happens (dashboards are not being displayed and/or rotated).

[torkelo]

strange, works for me. What interval did you enter in the Timespan between dashboard change field?
Can you open chrome dev tools and inspect the console for js errors?

[costimuraru]

I've used 1m and 10s.

Here's the js error I'm receiving:

[torkelo]

Very strange, it must be some caching or weird thing. Cant explain why you get this error. Should work with the version you have.

[costimuraru]

Hmm strange indeed. I've retried using Firefox (instead of Chrome) and switched to http://play.grafana.org/v2/dashboard/db/graphite-carbon-metrics

The same behavior, although slightly different js error.

[torkelo]

could you just double check if you can replicate this again on http://play.grafana.org/v2 open chrome dev tools and disable caching and hit CTRL+F5 to refresh , just want to make sure it is not a caching issue (js files are revisioned/hashed so it should not be any)

[costimuraru]

@torkelo, I've tried both disabling caching and Ctrl + F5 with the same result.
I've also asked a colleague to try on his laptop and the exact same behavior occurred to him as well (OS X with Safari and Firefox).

[costimuraru]

I've also reproduced this on a Windows machine with Chrome:

[torkelo]

@costimuraru I know what is wrong now, you are trying to start a playlist without selecting any dashboards :)

I need to add some info/error message for this (and disable the start button).

[costimuraru]

@torkelo using the latest grafana version and testing on play.grafana.org I can still replicate this issue. Tested on a smart tv and the same behavior occured: The previous/stop/forward controls appear, but nothing else happens (dashboards are not being displayed and/or rotated).

[torkelo]

@costimuraru works great on play.grafana.org, are you SURE you are selecting any dashboards before starting the playlist? You the search field, enter pla, you should see some dashboard appear in the results, hit the right arrow button to add them to the playlist, then hit start.

[costimuraru]

@torkelo you are right, I was not pressing the right arrow.
I was relying (just like in grafana 1.0) to automatically play the bookmarked dashboards.

The playlist feature works well now, although a few improvements would be much appreciated:

• make the playlist creation process more accessible - something like making the right arrow more colorful + adding a tooltip to the icon would help (I completely missed it)
• You talked about the info/error message when starting a playlist with no dashboard selected - was this added because I didn't notice it
• support playlist with templating variables (issue Support for playlist with templating variables #773) :-) - with our current setup we can only see a fraction of the information, since most of the dashboards use variables to split graphs by servers' region
• possibility to save a playlist (if the PC/TV is rebooted the playlist configuration is currently lost and needs to be recreated)

[nopzor1200]

Just some quick feedback here. I was trying to document this feature so this is fresh in my mind.

1. Agree that the right arrow is something that's easy to miss - I completely missed it too! I had to puzzle over why my Playlist wasn't working for a couple of minutes before I figured it out.
2. Agree that it'd be nice to save a Playlist. Along those lines it'd be great to have multiple/different named Playlists.

[torkelo]

@costimuraru @nopzor1200

The playlist view will need a big update in a future release, especially when playlists will support template variables, and saving playlists.

But for 2.0 release I did a small UI change to make it more easy to understand:

[costimuraru]

Thanks @torkelo I think the improvement is great.
I look forward to seeing the other improvements as future versions roll out.