Learn how to create and configure widgets in Data Lab
Overview
Widgets give you essential information about your business, and they can be used separately or added to a dashboard. Create counters, charts, maps, gauges, lists, and tables to show your data in the most effective way possible.
Creating and configuring a widget
To create and configure a widget in Data Lab:
- In the navigation bar, select+ CREATE.
- Select New Widget.
- Choose a widget type, or select COPY FROM EXISTING to select a widget that already exists and save the copy to a destination folder.
To learn more about widget types, check out Understanding widget types.
- In the Widget Title box, enter a descriptive name for your widget.
- Select a data source from the Data Source drop-down menu.
- In the Group By drop-down menu, select a group by a clause that combines the results of your widget based on a common attribute.
- In the Measure drop-down menu, select a measure that is based on the action of your widget.
To learn more about widget measures, check out List of Widget Measures.
- Select the OPTIONS and TOOLBAR tabs to change the color palette or your widget filters in the toolbar.
To learn more about the OPTIONS tab, check out Creating Widgets.
To learn more about the TOOLBAR tab settings, check out The Toolbar Tab. - Select the DATA SOURCE tab to see and edit all customization options for your widget:
- Include Archived / Inactive
- Common Filters
- Include Archived / Inactive
- Attribute Filters
- WhereQL
- HavingQL
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Top Filters Binding
To learn more about customizations, check out Standard Fields.
- Choose SAVE.
Your widget is now available by default in your My Insights area. If you created the widget in a specific folder, you can find it there.
Standard widget fields
Here are the standard fields you can work with when creating and configuring your widgets:
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Widget Title (1)
Give the widget a meaningful, descriptive name. -
Data Source (2)
This is the endpoint from which the widget will query data. -
Group By (3)
Select a field by which to group the data output by the widget. For example, you may select invoices as the data source and group them by client. This will show you the number of invoices for each client. -
Label (4)
Enter the name of the field that you are grouping by. This field will populate by default once you have selected a field to group by. -
Measure (5)
Measures are properties on which calculations can be made. Examples include COUNT, SUM, AVG, MIN AND MAX, DISTINCT, and EXPRESSION. -
Label (6)
Enter a descriptive label for the measure. -
Attribute Filters (7)
These are described in greater detail below. These filters allow you to select an attribute of the data source and filter by that attribute. For example, you might select clients as the data source and select names as an attribute filter. You will then be able to filter clients by the client name.
When you create a widget, you are querying data from a specific source. The source you query has a set of properties. The attribute filters allow you to filter your widget output by any selected properties. Below is an example of attribute filters for the invoices endpoint. Select any of these properties to filter the widget output.
Once you have selected a property, you will click on one or more attributes to filter on. In this example, invoices are the data source, and the contract is the property. A list of attributes appears. You can check one or more to filter by those attributes. The list of properties and attributes depends on the data source you select.
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WhereQL (8)
Just as you can add a where statement to a TQL query, you can also add a where statement to your widget filters the output. You can write a WhereQL statement to filter the output of your widget. Omit the ‘where’ keyword from the statement. For example, you could write: where client.name = ‘Ace’.To learn more about TQL where statements, check out the Common TQL keywords table.
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Top Filters Binding (9)
Here, you can determine exactly which fields the region, date, and account filters will be bound to. For example, the filters that appear in the following points may filter on the invoice date, invoice due date, invoice creation date, service start date, etc. In other words, this option allows you to determine exactly which date field the date search will be bound to. For the client filter, you can choose whether it will filter on the client name, the client parent account, the client zones, etc. -
Curly braces icon (10)
Click on the curly braces to view, download or copy the widget JSON. -
Date Range (11)
Filter by the date that you bound to this filter. -
Region Filter (12)
Filter by the region information you bound in step 9. -
Account (13)
Filter by the account criteria you selected in step 9. -
HavingQL
In some widgets, such as the Summary Table, you will find a field to enter a TQL having a statement. This is the HavingQL field
Use the measures and dimensions you set to write a having statement. Having statements are used with aggregate functions, such as COUNT, AVG, SUM, etc. In the example above, all records with a count greater than 30 would be returned.
To learn more about aggregate functions and having statements, check out Using the TrackTik Query Language (TQL) Playground.
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The TOOLBAR tab
In the TOOLBAR tab, you can show or hide the toolbar for a widget. Once the toolbar is shown, you can then select the options that will appear in the toolbar.
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TOOLBAR (1)
Click this option to use the configurations in the toolbar tab. -
Display Toolbar (2)
Use this slider to activate or deactivate the toolbar option. When this option is active, space appears at the top of the widget, displaying the other options when they are active. -
Display Counts (3)
Selecting this option will show a count of the number of items in the toolbar. -
Attribute Filters (4)
Like the attribute filters described above, select attributes to filter the widget output. These filters will become available in the Toolbar space described in point 2.
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TOOLBAR (1)