# Use the AWS Data Sources plugin to find AWS data
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AWS provides an application plugin to make it easier to discover and use AWS resources as data sources in your Amazon Managed Grafana workspace. The *AWS Data Sources* plugin is installed by default in a new workspace.

The AWS Data Sources plugin requires permissions to access your resources for discovery. For more information, see [Required permissions](#aws-ds-plugin-permissions).

## Open the AWS Data Sources plugin
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**To open the AWS Data Sources plugin**

1. Sign into your Amazon Managed Grafana workspace.

1. From the **menu** in the top left, choose **Apps**, then **AWS Data Sources**.

The AWS Data Sources plugin interface appears listing AWS services that you can search for resources.

## Discover resources
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**To discover resources from your AWS account**

1. Open the AWS Data Sources plugin.

1. From the list of AWS services, select the one that you want to find resources to use as a data source. For example, select **Amazon Managed Service for Prometheus**. This will take you to the **Data sources** tab, with the **Service** selected for you.

1. Choose the AWS Region where you want to find resources. For example, select `US East (N. Virginia)`.
**Note**  
To find resources, the plugin must have the appropriate [permissions](#aws-ds-plugin-permissions) to access that service in that region.

1. Some services can have multiple resources in a region. If there are multiple resources in the region, the AWS Data Sources plugin provides a list to choose from.

   From the list of resources (in this case, Amazon Managed Service for Prometheus), select the resource that you want to use as a data source. For example, selecting a Amazon Managed Service for Prometheus workspace will setup that resource as a data source The data source is ready to use in your dashboards or monitoring with Amazon Managed Grafana.

1. The resources in that service and Region that you have provisioned appear at the bottom of the page.

   (Optional) You can choose **Go to settings** to view and edit the settings for that data source.

**Note**  
The AWS Data Sources plugin depends on the individual data source plugins being installed in your workspace. For example, if you want to use the AWS X-Ray functionality, you must have the X-Ray data source plugin installed from the [plugin catalog](grafana-plugins.md#manage-plugins).

## Versions and updating the plugin
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The AWS Data Sources plugin is regularly updated. The version installed with a new workspace is not typically the latest version. Newer versions can have more functionality than the one installed in your workspace. For example, a newer version might support additional AWS services as data sources.

To see the changes in each version of the AWS Data Sources plugin, you can view the [Changelog](https://grafana.com/grafana/plugins/aws-datasource-provisioner-app/?tab=changelog).

To update to a newer version of the plugin, follow the standard instructions for [Update a plugin](grafana-plugins.md#update-plugin).

**Note**  
If you update to a newer version of the AWS Data Sources plugin, you need to provide additional [permissions](#aws-ds-plugin-permissions) for new data sources that are not managed by Amazon Managed Grafana.

## Required permissions
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The AWS Data Sources plugin requires permission to access your AWS resources. The easiest way to do that is to allow Amazon Managed Grafana to manage the permissions for you. To learn how to set up service-managed permissions for data sources, see [Manage permissions for data sources and notification channels](AMG-datasource-and-notification.md). Amazon Managed Grafana can manage the permissions for the AWS resources that are included in the AWS Data Sources plugin by default.

If you update the AWS Data Sources plugin to a newer version than is included by default in your workspace, it could add support for AWS resources whose permissions are not managed by Amazon Managed Grafana automatically. In these cases, you must add the permissions yourself. For example, AWS IoT TwinMaker was added to a recent version of the plugin, (version 1.9.0), and permissions for these are not managed by Amazon Managed Grafana.

To learn more about the permissions for any specific data source, see the details for that data source provided in the [Connect to data sources](AMG-data-sources.md) section. For example, the [Connect to an AWS IoT TwinMaker data source](AMG-iot-twinmaker.md) section includes details about giving Amazon Managed Grafana permissions to access AWS IoT TwinMaker.