We’ve got a big changelog today, folks. 

It’s coming down the tracks packed to the rafters with new features that will leave you feeling cool, calm, confident, and ready for whatever life throws your way.

First we’re gonna talk about a new composable observability dashboard that we’ve just released into Priority Boarding for you to try

Then we’re gonna show you a new way to get real-time deployment updates in the dashboard

Then we’re gonna let you play with an all-new WYSIWYG editor in Help Station

Then we’re gonna inform you of some important news regarding your templates next week that might need migration

And finally, we’re gonna tell you all about a number of quality-of-life improvements we’ve shipped this week

But it’s Friday and you know what that means …

(Dramatic pause … train gets louder … tension building … excitement peaking …)

Observability Dashboard to Priority Boarding

The all-new configurable Observability Dashboard is now available behind a feature flag

Today we’re releasing a brand new Observability Dashboard behind a 

. It comes with a new top navbar and a large number of configuration options.

We’ve been hinting at it for a while, but we’re now working towards delivering a fully customizable observability experience with logs, metrics, and data all in one place and configurable to your taste and needs.

In this first release, it’s possible to create new widgets, expand widgets, and customize the dashboard at the environment-level scope. We think you’ll especially enjoy all the configuration options we’re providing for adding widgets (CPU Usage, Memory Usage, Network In/Out, Disk Usage, Logs, and Project Usage).

Let’s burn through some of the features.

The new top navigation bar has options to toggle to Observability

The new top navigation bar makes it easier to separate concerns in a project.

Resize Observability Board widgets with ease

Add widgets, move widgets, expand widgets, contract widgets, delete widgets … the new Observability Dashboard is fully configurable to meet your needs. Remember that it’s scoped to the environment — so you can create different dashboards depending on where you’re working.

With the new widget creator, you can create new modules using the following data: CPU Usage, Memory Usage, Network In/Out, Disk Usage, Logs, and Project Usage. You can also apply filters.

We’re excited for you to try this feature and we’d love to know what you think. 

To activate the new Observability Dashboard, flip the 

Once you’ve played around with your new dashboard, 

. Also be sure to check out the new docs 

Real-time Deployment Updates to Priority Boarding

Detailed deployment updates are now expandable at the service level

For too long it’s been a little bit of a black box to understand all the steps going on under the hood when deploying a service. 

So we’ve added real-time deployment updates to the services panel — all you have to do is flip the 

With this new view, you’ll now be able to see exactly what stage your service is in during deployment. If you click the dropdown (see above), you’ll be able to get a linear list of tasks Railway is running on your behalf. 

The thread editor in Help Station now provides a what-you-see-is-what-you-get editing experience

We’ve fielded a lot of suggestions for improving the thread editor in 

We knew pretty quickly after launching that we’d have to add WYSIWYG editing — so that’s what we’ve done. 

You can now quickly define styles with keystrokes, markdown, or using the new hovering text formatting toolbar. 

 we let you know that the hour was nearing to migrate your legacy templates using the new 

Well, next week we’ll be doing just that.

 plugins, we recommend you update templates using legacy plugins to the 

All you have to do is log in to Railway and edit a template that uses plugins and you should see a handy new modal. (Hint: You can find your templates 

If you have any trouble be sure to drop your issue in the 

We added visual variable reference connections if you have 

 enabled. You can turn these off by pulling up the command palette (

We added support for single quotes in template variable functions

We fixed an issue where latest updates to templates wouldn't show up as they were being cached

We fixed an issue with build logs not working on the CLI when using project tokens (this is especially relevant if you’re 

We added a status page link to the footer

https://res.cloudinary.com/railway/image/upload/v1717202099/2024-0531_wmvlsw.png

Observability Dashboard, Real-Time Deployment Updates, WYSIWYG Thread Editor, Template Migration Next Week

Changelog #0188