# Kibana external data

**URL:** <https://discuss.elastic.co/t/kibana-external-data/195655>\
**Category:** Kibana\
**Created:** [August 18, 2019, 4:03pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/kibana-external-data/195655 "2019-08-18T16:03:01Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 3\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![HisShadow](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/bcef8e/32.png) [@HisShadow](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/HisShadow)\
**Post date:** [August 18, 2019, 4:03pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/kibana-external-data/195655/1 "2019-08-18T16:03:01Z")

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Is it possible to use some external data source to augment visualizations in kibana? Say I have logs, and each log has an ID field, and I want to use my external API to add an email address associated with that ID to the Data Table visualization. Or maybe this is not the right way to do it at all, in which case what would be the right way?

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**Author:** ![Larry\_Gregory](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/elastic/user_avatar/discuss.elastic.co/larry_gregory/32/34969_2.png) [@Larry\_Gregory](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/Larry_Gregory)\
**Post date:** [August 19, 2019, 1:43pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/kibana-external-data/195655/2 "2019-08-19T13:43:13Z")

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Hey @HisShadow,

Up front, there isn't a way out of the box to make this happen. I have a couple of ideas though, depending on how technical you're willing to get. In general though, the best way to implement this would be to get the email address into your Elasticsearch indices, so that Kibana doesn't have to perform this lookup on the fly:

1. If you're able to use Logstash, you could add an [http filter](https://www.elastic.co/guide/en/logstash/current/lookup-enrichment.html#http-def) to perform this lookup before the data in ingested into Elasticsearch. That way, the data is already available by the time it gets to Kibana.
2. If you're not able to use Logstash, or if the email address is subject to change after being indexed, you could consider writing a [custom Kibana visualization](https://www.elastic.co/guide/en/kibana/current/development-visualize-index.html) which is capable of performing this lookup.

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**Author:** ![system](https://us1.discourse-cdn.com/elastic/original/3X/1/a/1ac57faf039f6b580b3f104ef42a2a89e41014de.png) [@system](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/system)\
**Post date:** [September 16, 2019, 1:43pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/kibana-external-data/195655/3 "2019-09-16T13:43:19Z")

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