How to Import an Azure Portal Dashboard into Terraform

Import Azure Portal Dashboard with Terraback (recommended)

Terraback reverse-engineers your live infrastructure: it reads the Azure Portal resource with read-only credentials, generates the HCL, and produces the exact import block. Two commands take you from a live Azure Portal Dashboard to managed Terraform.

terraback scan all azure --subscription-id YOUR_ID

terraback azure import --method bulk

The Terraform import block

Terraback emits a Terraform 1.5+ import block like the one below. Because the block lives in your configuration, the import is reviewable in a pull request and repeatable across environments.

import {
  to = azurerm_portal_dashboard.main
  id = "/subscriptions/00000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000000/resourceGroups/prod-rg/providers/Microsoft.Portal/dashboards/prod-ops-dashboard"
}

Example azurerm_portal_dashboard configuration

Here is a realistic Azure Portal Dashboard block. Terraback generates a fuller version from your actual resource attributes; this is a minimal, valid starting point.

resource "azurerm_portal_dashboard" "main" {
  name                = "prod-ops-dashboard"
  resource_group_name = "prod-rg"
  location            = "eastus"

  dashboard_properties = jsonencode({
    lenses = []
  })
}

Gotchas when importing a Azure Portal Dashboard

• The ARM type is Microsoft.Portal/dashboards; the dashboard 'name' is often a GUID generated by the portal rather than a friendly string.
• dashboard_properties is a large JSON document describing the tile layout; Terraback emits it via jsonencode, and the provider is sensitive to key ordering and formatting in that JSON.
• Tiles reference other resource IDs (metrics, queries, resources) inside the JSON; those referenced resources are not imported with the dashboard.
• Dashboards pinned by individual users live in a hidden per-user resource group and are not the same as the shared dashboards this resource manages.

Doing it manually with terraform import

The native approach is to write the azurerm_portal_dashboard block by hand, then run terraform import azurerm_portal_dashboard.example <import-id> for every resource, one at a time. That works for a handful of resources, but it does not scale: you author all the HCL yourself and repeat the command for each item. Terraback generates the HCL and the import blocks for your whole account in one pass.

Import other Azure resources