Reference the current dashboard from anywhere with {{selfEntity}}

New Relic dashboards now support a {{selfEntity}} template variable that resolves to the dashboard's own entity GUID, wherever you reference it in that dashboard's configuration.

What you can do with {{selfEntity}}

Previously, making a widget reference its own dashboard — for example, to keep facet linking pointed at the right place — meant hardcoding that dashboard's GUID. Duplicate the dashboard, and every hardcoded reference still pointed back at the original, breaking facet links and any other self-referencing configuration.

Now you can drop {{selfEntity}} into any part of a widget's raw configuration, and New Relic resolves it to whichever dashboard the widget currently lives on:

• Facet linking: Add {{selfEntity}} to linkedEntityGuids so a widget always links back to its own dashboard, not the dashboard you copied it from.
• Widget names: Reference {{selfEntity}} in a widget's title.
• NRQL queries: Use {{selfEntity}} inside a query, for example to filter results to the dashboard's own entity.
• Markdown widgets: Reference {{selfEntity}} inside markdown widget text.
• Any other rawConfiguration field: Use {{selfEntity}} in any field where you'd otherwise hardcode a dashboard GUID.

How to get started

How you adopt {{selfEntity}} depends on how the dashboard is managed:

• Facet linking on existing dashboards: In the UI, disable facet linking on the widget and apply the change, then re-enable it. This replaces the hardcoded dashboard GUID with {{selfEntity}}.
• Facet linking on new dashboards: Rely on the default behavior — New Relic applies {{selfEntity}} automatically, with no manual step needed.
• Terraform or JSON-defined dashboards: Remove any hardcoded GUIDs and replace them with {{selfEntity}}, for example:

"widgets": [
  {
    "id": "XXXXXXXX",
    "title": "Latest versions",
    "layout": {
      "column": 1,
      "row": 1,
      "width": 4,
      "height": 5
    },
    "visualization": {
      "id": "viz.table"
    },
    "rawConfiguration": {
      "facet": {
        "showOtherSeries": false
      },
      "linkedEntityGuids": [
        "{{selfEntity}}"
      ],
      "nrqlQueries": [
        {
          "accountIds": [
            XXXXXXX,
            YYYYYYY
          ],
          "query": "YOUR_QUERY"
        }
      ],
    }
  }
]

To learn more, see Filter New Relic dashboards by facets