Question

Widget showing value for 4 months ago

  • 14 January 2021
  • 6 replies
  • 73 views

Userlevel 5
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I have an Object that contains KPI values by month (month represented by the date of the first day of the month). In a Dashboard, I'd like to show a widget that provides the value of a KPI from 4 months ago (which updates automatically every month). In date filters, however, "Last month" and "Last N months" is available, but not "N months ago".

The only workaround I can come up with for now, is adding a date field to the object that represents "month - 3" so I can filter on that one with "previous month" but I don't think that's very discoverable. Does anyone see a better solution?


6 replies

Userlevel 7
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@Jef Vanlaer bumping this to the top for more visibility. 

Userlevel 5
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@sai_ram Thanks. In the meantime, I have implemented my workaround using calculated fields on the object (which was easier than I thought it would be), but I'm still interested to see if anyone sees other (better?) options.

Userlevel 6
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How about 2 different filters on the same field? 

Filter 1 → Date > 3 months ago AND 

Filter 2 → Date < 5 months ago

Userlevel 5
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@rakesh You're right. That would provide the right data, but it would be pretty hard to adjust by end-users. Also, I wanted to have 1 global filter on my dashboard affecting all the widgets, which is a lot harder in this way.

Userlevel 6
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Understood it Jeff, however, we are in the direction of simplifying options - including consolidating date literals. Even usage data suggests that ~98% of the filters are on 5 date literals only. Given that we might not be able to add another date literal to support this. 

 

Can you add some more details on what metric/ report you want to show and why 4 months?

 

Tagging @naveen_ithapu  and @ciarapeter FYI

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We are reporting retention numbers for new users who started every month, for example how many are still active after 30 days and 180 days. Obviously, these numbers come in with some delay, so we can only report on them after a couple of months (depending on the metric and the usage frequency of the software).

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