anchor.diff:  [[new-dashboards]]
  -== Developer Guide: Creating new Kibana dashboards
  +== Developer Guide: Creating New Kibana Dashboards for a Beat
   
  -This guide walks you through the steps for creating a new Kibana dashboards
  -or changing the existing Kibana dashboards for a single Beat.
  +When contributing to Beats development, you may want to add new dashboards or modify existing ones. To make this easier,
  +we've created an `import_dashboards` script that you can use to <<import-dashboards,import the dashboards>> from an
  +existing Beat into Kibana, where you can modify the dashboards or use them as a starting point to create new dashboards. 
   
  -If the Beat you are targeting has already few dashboards, the first step would be to import
  -those dashboards to Kibana and then start changing or adding a dashboard from the existing ones. 
  +Kibana saves the dashboards, along with all the dependencies such as visualizations, searches, and index patterns, in
  +a special index in Elasticsearch. By default the index is `.kibana`, but you can specify a different index.
   
  -Kibana saves the dashboards together with all the dependencies (visualizations, searches and
  -index patterns) in a special index in Elasticsearch. By default the index is `.kibana`, but it can be changed to anything.
  +When you're done making changes to the dashboards in Kibana, you can use the `export_dashboards` script to <<export-dashboards,export the dashboards>>, along with all dependencies, to a local directory.
   
  -After you have created or changed a dashboard in Kibana for a certain Beat, you can export it together with all dependencies to
  -your local directory.
  +To make sure the dashboards are compatible with the latest version of Kibana and Elasticsearch, we
  +recommend that you use the virtual environment under
  +https://github.com/elastic/beats/tree/master/testing/environments[beats/testing/environments] to import, create, and
  +export the Kibana dashboards.
   
  -We recommend you use the virtual environment under
  -https://github.com/elastic/beats/tree/master/testing/environments[beats/testing/environments] with the latest version of
  -Kibana and Elasticsearch to import, create and export the Kibana dashboards, so the latest dashboards are exported from 
  -the same Kibana version.
  +[[import-dashboards]]
  +=== Importing Existing Beat Dashboards
   
  -=== Import existing Beat dashboards
  +To import all the dashboards for a Beat, including dependencies such as visualizations, searches, and index
  +patterns, you can use the bash script `import_dashboards.sh` (on Unix) or the Powershell script `import_dashboards.ps1`
  +(on Windows) from https://github.com/elastic/beats/tree/master/dev-tools[dev-tools]. 
   
  -For Unix systems, you can use the bash script `import_dashboards.sh` 
  -and for Windows you can use the powershell script `import_dashboards.ps1` from
  -https://github.com/elastic/beats/tree/master/dev-tools[dev-tools].
  +For example, to import the dashboards for Packetbeat, you can run the following command from the `packetbeat` directory in the `beats` repository:
  +
  +*Unix*:
  +
  +[source,shell]
  +----------------------------------------------------------------------
  +../dev-tools/import_dashboards.sh -dir etc/kibana
  +----------------------------------------------------------------------
  +
  +*Windows*:
  +
  +[source,shell]
  +----------------------------------------------------------------------
  +..\dev-tools\import_dashboards.ps1 -dir .\etc\kibana
  +----------------------------------------------------------------------
   
   The command has the following options:
   
  
positive.code: 
  The Kibana dashboards together with its dependencies are saved into a
  special index pattern in Elasticsearch (by default .kibana), so you need to
  specify the Elasticsearch URL and optionally an username and password.
  
  Usage:
    import_dashboards.sh -url http://localhost:9200 -user admin:secret -index .kibana
  
negative.code: The Elasticsearch index pattern where the Beat is storing the data. The default value is constructed from the Beat name + `-*` string.
  
  ==== kibana
  The Elasticsearch index pattern where Kibana saves its configuration. The default value is `.kibana`.
  
  ==== dir
  The output directory where the dashboards and all dependencies will be saved. The default value is `output`.
  
  NOTE: To make made it even easier for you to import and export the dashboards, we've also added support for running the
  following commands in the Beats repository: `make import-dashboards` and `make export-dashboards`.
  
  