Operational panels in OpenSearch Dashboards are collections of visualizations generated using [Piped Processing Language]({{site.url}}{{site.baseurl}}/observability-plugin/ppl/index) (PPL) queries.
If you want to start using operational panels without adding any data, expand the **Action** menu, choose **Add samples**, and Dashboards adds a set of operational panels with saved visualizations for you to explore.
## Create an operational panel
To create an operational panel and add visualizations:
1. From the **Add Visualization** dropdown menu, choose **Select Existing Visualization** or **Create New Visualization**, which takes you to the [event analytics]({{site.url}}{{site.baseurl}}/observability-plugin/event-analytics) explorer, where you can use PPL to create visualizations.