grafana/docs/sources/guides/whats-new-in-v6-2.md

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title = "What's New in Grafana v6.2"
description = "Feature & improvement highlights for Grafana v6.2"
keywords = ["grafana", "new", "documentation", "6.2"]
type = "docs"
[menu.docs]
name = "Version 6.2"
identifier = "v6.2"
parent = "whatsnew"
weight = -13
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# What's New in Grafana v6.2

> More content will be added to this guide before the stable release.

Grafana v6.2 Beta is now [available for download](https://grafana.com/grafana/download/beta).

For all details please read the full [CHANGELOG.md](https://github.com/grafana/grafana/blob/master/CHANGELOG.md)

If you use a password for your datasources please read the [upgrade notes](/installation/upgrading/#upgrading-to-v6-2).

## Improved security

- Ensure encryption of datasource secrets
- Embedding Grafana not allowed per default
- Disable browser caching for full page requests

## Provisioning

- Environment variables support, see [Using environment variables](/administration/provisioning/#using-environment-variables) for more information.
- Reload provisioning configs, see [Admin HTTP API](/http_api/admin/#reload-provisioning-configurations) for more information.
- Do not allow deletion of provisioned dashboards
- When trying to delete or save provisioned dashboard, relative file path to the file is shown in the dialog.

## Official support for Elasticsearch 7

Grafana v6.2 ships with official support for Elasticsearch v7, see [Using Elasticsearch in Grafana](/features/datasources/elasticsearch/#elasticsearch-version) for more information.

## Bar Gauge Panel

Grafana v6.2 ships with a new exciting panel! This new panel, named Bar Gauge, is very similar to the current
Gauge panel and shares almost all it's options. The main difference is that the Bar Gauge uses both horizontal and
vertical space much better and can be more efficiently stacked both vertically and horizontally. The Bar Gauge also
comes with 3 unique display modes, Basic, Gradient, and Retro LED. Read the
[preview article](https://grafana.com/blog/2019/04/11/sneak-preview-of-new-visualizations-coming-to-grafana/) to learn
more about the design & features of this new panel.

Retro LED display mode
{{< docs-imagebox img="/assets/img/blog/bargauge/bar_gauge_retro_led.jpg" max-width="800px" caption="Bar Gauge LED mode" >}}

Gradient mode
{{< docs-imagebox img="/assets/img/blog/bargauge/gradient.jpg" max-width="800px" caption="Bar Gauge Gradient mode" >}}

## Improved table data support

We have been working on improving table support in our new react panels (Gauge & Bar Gauge) and this is ongoing work
that will eventually come to the new Graph & Singlestat & Table panels we are working on. But you can see it already in
the Gauge and Bar Gauge panels. Without any config, you can visualize any number of columns or choose to visualize each
row as its own gauge.

## Lazy loading of panels out of view

This has been one of the most requested features for many years and is now finally here! Lazy loading of panels means
Grafana will not issue any data queries for panels that are not visible. This will greatly reduce the load
on your data source backends when loading dashboards with many panels.

## Panels without title

Sometimes your panels do not need a title and having that panel header still take up space makes singlestats and
other panels look strange and have bad vertical centering. In v6.2 Grafana will allow panel content (visualizations)
to use the full panel height in case there is no panel title.

{{< docs-imagebox img="/img/docs/v62/panels_with_no_title.jpg" max-width="800px" caption="Bar Gauge Gradient mode" >}}

## Minor Features and Fixes

This release contains a lot of small features and fixes:

- Explore - Adds user time zone support, reconnect for failing datasources and a fix that prevents killing Prometheus instances when Histogram metrics are loaded.
- Alerting - Adds support for configuring timeout durations and retries, see [configuration](/installation/configuration/#evaluation-timeout-seconds) for more information.
- Elasticsearch - A small bug fix to properly display percentiles metrics in table panel.
- InfluxDB - Support for POST HTTP verb.
- CloudWatch - Important fix for default alias disappearing in v6.1.
- Search - Works in a scope of dashboard's folder by default when viewing dashboard

Checkout the [CHANGELOG.md](https://github.com/grafana/grafana/blob/master/CHANGELOG.md) file for a complete list of new features, changes, and bug fixes.

A huge thanks to our community for all the reported issues, bug fixes and feedback.

## Upgrading

Read important [upgrade notes](/installation/upgrading/#upgrading-to-v6-2).