Results Binding in a Text Widget

Do you have dashboards that are not tied to a specific timeframe? Or is your imports to Einstein Analytics not done on a daily basis? How do your users know what time period they are looking at data from? Well, I have a way for you to easily portray this to your users using two hidden steps and result binding.

I have a very simple dashboard with just one step # Trips; however, the user cannot see the timeframe of the data. So I want to add a text widget with this information. As mentioned above I need to create two hidden steps; one calculating the first day and one calculating the last day.

Hidden Step: First Date

First, let’s create a new step to the dashboard; I’ll choose my trip dataset.

We need to group the dataset by a date field (Year-Month-Day), in my case Start Date.

Now I want to switch to SAQL mode by clicking >_ in the top right corner. As you can see our changes has already been applied to the SAQL, but we need to do a little bit more, we need to limit our result to 1. So simply change 2000 to 1. Also, we want to change the date field to avoid the standard “~~~” and just use “-“. Finally, click “apply”. You should expect something like this:

q = load "trip";
q = group q by ('start_date_Year', 'start_date_Month', 'start_date_Day');
q = foreach q generate 'start_date_Year' + "-" + 'start_date_Month' + "-" + 'start_date_Day' as 'start_date_Year-start_date_Month-start_date_Day', count() as 'count';
q = order q by 'start_date_Year-start_date_Month-start_date_Day' asc;
q = limit q 1;

Before clicking done remember to give your new step a relevant name, so it’s easy to find later. I’ve called mine FirstDateSAQL.

Hidden Step: Last Date

For the second hidden step we will simply clone the step we just created. The only thing we need to modify is the order; instead of “asc” put “desc” and click “apply”. Your step should look something like this:

q = load "trip";
q = group q by ('start_date_Year', 'start_date_Month', 'start_date_Day');
q = foreach q generate 'start_date_Year' + "-" + 'start_date_Month' + "-" + 'start_date_Day' as 'start_date_Year-start_date_Month-start_date_Day', count() as 'count';
q = order q by 'start_date_Year-start_date_Month-start_date_Day' desc;
q = limit q 1;

Before finishing and clicking done rename your step. I’ve called mine LastDateSAQL.

Result Binding

The last part is to tie it all together in a text widget. So I’ll add a text widget to my dashboard and populate the text with “This is showing data from A to B”.

Please note the ID of the text widget, in my case “text_2”. Now we need to switch to the JSON (Command+E or Ctrl+E) and modify widget.

In the Widget section of your dashboard JSON find your version of “text_2”. We need to modify the “text” parameter of the widget and add the result binding to the string using this structure.

{{column(STEP_NAME.result, ["FIELD_NAME"]).asObject()}}

First, replace “A” with the following result binding:

{{column(FirstDateSAQL_1.result, ["start_date_Year-start_date_Month-start_date_Day"]).asObject()}}

Next, replace “B” with a similar result binding:

{{column(LastDateSAQL_1.result, ["start_date_Year-start_date_Month-start_date_Day"]).asObject()}}

For both of them remember to change the date to the date field you have used.

The text widget should now look something like this:

"text_2": {
 "parameters": {
 "fontSize": 20,
 "text": "This is showing data from {{column(FirstDateSAQL_1.result, ["start_date_Year-start_date_Month-start_date_Day"]).asObject()}} to {{column(LastDateSAQL_1.result, ["start_date_Year-start_date_Month-start_date_Day"]).asObject()}}",
 "textAlignment": "left",
 "textColor": "#335779"
 },
 "type": "text"
 }

That’s it! Now preview your dashboard and see that “A” and “B” has been replaced with the first date and the last date.

Written by

Rikke Hovgaard

I have worked with CRM Analytics since 2015 (back then Wave). I started this blog to help make the journey to master CRM Analytics easy by documenting tips, tricks & cool solutions.

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