---
_build:
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labels:
  products:
    - cloud
    - enterprise
    - oss
title: Release notes for Grafana 8.1.0-beta2
---

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# Release notes for Grafana 8.1.0-beta2

### Features and enhancements

- **Alerting:** Expand the value string in alert annotations and labels. [#37051](https://github.com/grafana/grafana/pull/37051), [@gerobinson](https://github.com/gerobinson)
- **Auth:** Add Azure HTTP authentication middleware. [#36932](https://github.com/grafana/grafana/pull/36932), [@kostrse](https://github.com/kostrse)
- **Auth:** Auth: Pass user role when using the authentication proxy. [#36729](https://github.com/grafana/grafana/pull/36729), [@yuwaMSFT2](https://github.com/yuwaMSFT2)
- **Gazetteer:** Update countries.json file to allow for linking to 3-letter country codes. [#37129](https://github.com/grafana/grafana/pull/37129), [@bryanuribe](https://github.com/bryanuribe)

### Bug fixes

- **Config:** Fix Docker builds by correcting formatting in sample.ini. [#37106](https://github.com/grafana/grafana/pull/37106), [@FZambia](https://github.com/FZambia)
- **Explore:** Fix encoding of internal URLs. [#36919](https://github.com/grafana/grafana/pull/36919), [@aocenas](https://github.com/aocenas)
