# Timelion Configurabiliy and documentation

**URL:** <https://discuss.elastic.co/t/timelion-configurabiliy-and-documentation/81725>\
**Category:** Kibana\
**Tags:** timelion\
**Created:** [April 9, 2017, 8:08pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/timelion-configurabiliy-and-documentation/81725 "2017-04-09T20:08:24Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 3\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![Ram\_Varra](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/65b543/32.png) [@Ram\_Varra](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/Ram_Varra)\
**Post date:** [April 9, 2017, 8:08pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/timelion-configurabiliy-and-documentation/81725/1 "2017-04-09T20:08:25Z")

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I was very excited about the announcement of Timelion and introductory videos about its capability. However, I am having difficulty with being able to use it with my data. Key issues I run into:

1. I am not able to figure out how to configure Timelion panels to use a specific index-pattern or saved search. Looks like it only works with current default index pattern, unlike visualizations that allow you to select the data from any index-pattern or saved search.

2. Looks like the timestamp field is always '@timestamp'. There were some articles about how to edit timelion.json, but I can not find any clear reference documentation about this. Also, having this configured statically for entire Kibana instance in a configuration file does not sound right. I am looking for how one can select a timestamp filed as we do with index patterns or saved searches.

3. The documentation is very sparse. There are lots articles from pre-kibana (stand-alone plugin) versions to bundled into Kibana. Not very easy to figure out what is applicable to Kibana 5.3.0.

Appreciate if any one have how they are addressing these issues.

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**Author:** ![warkolm](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/elastic/user_avatar/discuss.elastic.co/warkolm/32/39224_2.png) [@warkolm](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/warkolm)\
**Post date:** [April 10, 2017, 12:46am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/timelion-configurabiliy-and-documentation/81725/2 "2017-04-10T00:46:45Z")

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A lot of the TL help is built in/contextual, once you start typing in it'll prompt you. It's mentioned here [https://www.elastic.co/guide/en/kibana/current/timelion-createviz.html](https://www.elastic.co/guide/en/kibana/current/timelion-createviz.html)

1. You can use `.es(index=BLAH)`
2. `.es(index=BLAH,timefield=OTHERFIELD)`
3. Yeah ☹ [https://github.com/elastic/kibana/issues/8481](https://github.com/elastic/kibana/issues/8481)

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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:** [May 8, 2017, 12:50am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/timelion-configurabiliy-and-documentation/81725/3 "2017-05-08T00:50:00Z")

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