Hi jbassi1,
sorry if I wasn't clear: I hint to use index only to have more performant searches not for your problem: because if you don't use it, your search will search on all the indexes in the default path instead the only you want in your search.
Anyway, to map all the panels to the same time frame defined in a time input is a correct approach, but, to debug your problem, I hint to use a different time frame (e.g. yesterday or last hour, but without latest=now) to check if in this case you have always different results in your panels or not?
If you have the same results it means that the difference is related to new events indexed during search execution, if you have different results, there's a different problem.
The third hint is to explore the use of Post Process Searches hat gives you a more performant dashboard, you can find information about this in docs and in Splunk Dashboard Examples App.
Ciao.
Giuseppe
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