Map configuration

Everything you set in kepler's own panel — layers, colours, filters, interactions, the base map — lives in kepler's store, not in Grafana's. It survives a query refresh. It does not survive a page reload until you capture it.

Saving

Map configuration → Save current map in the panel options takes a snapshot of the current map and writes it into the panel's options, which means into the dashboard JSON. Save the dashboard and it comes back on the next load.

Why saving is explicit

Two reasons, both about the dashboard JSON.

A kepler configuration is a sizeable blob — layers, visual channels, colour ranges, filters, interaction config, the map style. Rewriting it on every pan would churn the dashboard for nothing, leave every dashboard permanently "unsaved", and make version control on dashboards-as-code useless: every diff would be a wall of coordinates.

And the layer configuration is a deliberate act. You style a map once and then look at it for months; automatic capture would mean an accidental colour change during a demo becomes the dashboard's new state.

What a save captures

Whatever kepler's own export produces: the layer list with all their styling, filters, the interaction configuration, split-map state, and the base map. It does not capture your data — that comes from the queries, every time.

With one exception: tilesets. A layer you added through kepler's own Add Data → Tileset — vector tile, raster tile, WMS, 3D tiles, bitmap — has no query behind it, so nothing would rebuild it on the next load. The save writes its descriptor instead: the name, the field list, and the URLs. No rows, so it stays a few lines of JSON. See Layers configured with a URL.

A CSV or GeoJSON you drop into Add Data is not saved. Persisting it would mean putting every row of the file in the dashboard JSON. Load such data through a query instead — see How a query becomes a map.

If you hit save before the map has finished mounting, nothing is captured. Give it a moment and try again.

What a saved configuration overrides

A saved configuration wins over the panel options

It names its own base map, so Base map in the options stops taking effect. It carries its own styling, so Follow dashboard theme appears to do nothing.

If a panel is ignoring an option you just changed, this is almost always why. Re-save the map to take a new snapshot, or clear the configuration to hand control back to the options.

Importing

Map configuration → Import configuration accepts a pasted JSON configuration. It is how you bring a map across from somewhere else — including from the tools this plugin is an alternative to.

Both shapes are accepted

Shape	Produced by
{ version, config }	kepler's saved config
{ datasets, config, info }	kepler's Export map, and Dekart

From the second, the config half is kept along with any tileset descriptors among its datasets — so a map built over someone's vector tiles arrives with those tiles. Everything else in datasets is dropped: the data comes from your panel's own queries, and importing a map does not import someone else's rows.

Configurations from older kepler releases

They work. A v1-era saved config from an older kepler is migrated by kepler's own schema on the way in, which matters because Dekart is still on kepler 3.2.6 and Foursquare Studio exports from whatever version it happens to run.

This is pinned by a characterisation test in the plugin's suite, so a regression in kepler's migration path shows up as a failing build rather than as a broken paste in somebody's dashboard.

What can go wrong

A pasted configuration references datasets by id. The panel's dataset ids are derived from your query refIds — A, B, C — so a configuration exported from a map whose datasets were called something else will parse but attach its layers to nothing.

The practical fix is to import the configuration, then re-point each layer at your dataset in kepler's layer panel, then save. Once saved, the ids match and it is stable.

Invalid JSON is rejected rather than throwing: a typo in the textarea cannot take the panel down.

Coming from another kepler.gl tool

See Coming from another kepler.gl tool, which covers the column conventions as well as the configuration.

Dashboards as code

A saved configuration is ordinary panel JSON, so it provisions like anything else. The plugin's own dev dashboards under provisioning/dashboards/ are hand-written files that include one, which is how the layer gallery pins a specific layer type per panel.

Two practical notes for that workflow: the blob is large, so keep it at the end of the options object where it does not obscure the rest of the diff, and remember that it pins the base map, so a provisioned dashboard will not follow the viewer's theme.