Databases are a crucial part of modern systems, which means database observability is incredibly important, too. However, gathering information on them can be complex, variable, and tricky to instrument in a consistent way. OpenTelemetry is helping to change that, and one of the most important aspects in making it work is a set of shared rules called semantic conventions.

The Jira plugin is one of our most-used integrations and for good reason. Teams rely on it daily to stay on top of work, manage issues, and ship on time. As more people leaned on it, we saw a chance to make the experience even smoother. So, we gave it an upgrade. We’ve refreshed the out-of-the-box dashboards, simplified the data streams, and improved the overall experience. So, let’s take a closer look at what’s changed.

Synthetic monitoring is a vital practice to proactively track the health and performance of web applications. Instead of waiting for users to report problems, synthetic monitoring helps developers catch issues before they impact real users. One powerful type of synthetic monitoring is the browser check. These checks go beyond basic ping checks, simulating how a user would actually interact with your website’s interface.

In March, we announced that Grafana OnCall (OSS) had entered maintenance mode. However, OnCall’s development continues in Grafana Cloud as Grafana Cloud IRM, combining on-call management and incident response into one integrated solution. Many users told us they still want to self-host Grafana and rely on Grafana Alerting to detect potential issues early—but they also need to escalate and manage incidents using an incident response management (IRM) solution.

At Grafana Labs, we’ve always believed that observability should be open and accessible — that belief extends beyond metrics, logs, and traces to the costs associated with managing observability at scale. That’s why we’re excited to share that we’ve adopted the FinOps Open Cost and Usage Specification ( FOCUS), a community-driven, open standard for cloud billing data.

At SquaredUp, we’re obsessed with making monitoring not just powerful, but a genuinely delightful experience for engineers and teams. When we first built our Pingdom plugin, the goal was simple: make website uptime and performance data easy to visualize alongside everything else you care about. But as our users pushed the boundaries—connecting more endpoints, demanding richer insights, and needing faster troubleshooting—we realized our plugin needed to keep up.

Grafana Metrics Drilldown offers a queryless experience for browsing Prometheus-compatible metrics. With Metrics Drilldown — which is part of our suite of Grafana Drilldown apps — you can quickly find related metrics with just a few simple clicks, no PromQL queries required.

We’re thrilled to announce the Beta launch of Logz.io Dashboards – a major step forward in how engineers and DevOps teams visualize and analyze their telemetry data. For the first time, Logz.io users can now create dashboards that bring together logs, metrics, and traces in a single unified view — making it easier than ever to monitor performance, detect issues, and troubleshoot incidents without switching tools or losing context. This launch is more than just a product update.