Building Plug-ins for AI/BI Dashboard

[suryaprayaga]

I want to develop some plug-ins in Databricks to allow me build 3D charts and visualisations that I can use code stubs from external sources like ObservableHQ. The visualisations can be written in any framework or language, but I was looking for a way where I can achieve this within Databricks.

The thought came from building a Grafana dashboard that has rich visualisations and admirable aesthetics.

Any thoughts?

[AmitDECopilot · Accepted solution]

My understanding is Databricks AI/BI dashboards are not really built like Grafana where you can install custom visualization plug-ins inside the dashboard itself. So if the requirement is true custom 3D charts using ObservableHQ / Three.js / custom JS, I don’t think AI/BI dashboard will directly support that as an internal plug-in model today.

What I would consider instead:

1. Use Databricks for the data prep / SQL / model output layer.
2. Build the custom visualization separately using Observable, Plotly/Dash, Streamlit, React, or another web framework.
3. Host it through Databricks Apps or another internal app hosting option if available in your environment.
4. Keep AI/BI dashboards for standard BI/reporting use cases, and use a custom app when the visualization experience needs to be very rich or interactive.

So basically, Databricks can still be the backend/data platform, but for Grafana-like custom plugin style visualizations, I would separate the visualization layer instead of trying to force everything inside AI/BI dashboard.