The flexible period feature is available on all new and existing periodic dashboards. Once activated, it will allow you to easily modify your dashboard’s overall period as well as the period for individual widgets.
The flexible period feature can be toggled on a dashboard directly in the dashboard list
A new periodic dashboard can also be directly created with flexible periods enabled
In your dashboard, clicking on the period will open the dashboard period menu, with the following options:
Period
The period menu will provide many preset periods to quickly change the data your dashboard is presenting
If none of the preset options available are what you need, “fixed period” will allow you to manually select the period of your choice, using either the calendar or the editable date fields
Show by
The show by menu will allow you to customize whether the information in relevant widgets is grouped by day, week or month. Do note that grouping by the same or larger increment than your dashboard period will make most widgets show a single point of data. For example, choosing a weekly period and showing by month. Inversely, showing data by day for periods of a year or more might lead to very long dashboard loading times, all the while being very difficult to parse for your client.
Dashboard period access
While this increased flexibility for period management is very useful, we understand that sometimes, you might not want the client to whom you are sending these reports to have that same access. By default, your client will have the same access to modify the period - though only for their viewing session. If you wish to prevent your client from viewing dates other than the ones on the report you share, simply change the dashboard period access to “restricted”
The dashboard period access can also be modified when sharing your dashboard through the different sharing options
Set widget period
When flexible periods are active on a dashboard, you are also able to individually edit a widget’s period to be different from the one in the dashboard. All of your relevant widgets will have the “set widget period” option in the hover menu.
Opening the menu will allow you to set a widget’s period to be the same as the dashboard’s or its own distinct period. Choosing the distinct period will allow you to edit the same options as the dashboard - the period and by what period is that information grouped.
Widgets with distinct periods will be identified by a calendar icon in the left corner, which will provide the widget’s period when hovered.
A widget’s distinct period is never able to be modified by your end client when viewing your reports.
Current limitations
CSV
The CSV integration is currently unsupported by the flexible period feature. Enabling the feature in an existing dashboard with CSV widgets will cause those widgets to turn to an error state. Toggling back to a regular periodic dashboard will return the widgets as they were and no data will be lost.
If you would still like to use the flexible period feature, we would recommend converting your CSV files to google sheets and using that integration instead, as it is currently supported by the feature.
Static widgets
Static widgets in flexible period dashboards will only show a single value and modifying it will overwrite the previous comment, number or annotation. With flexible periods enabled, it is not possible to navigate and view past comments, for example. In an existing dashboard with multiple past comments, disabling the flexible period feature will allow you to view all past comments by consulting past periods.
Modified widget behavior
Certain widgets’ behavior have been modified to better support the flexible period model. Widgets that had a different period than the dashboard’s period by default will now show information about the dashboard’s period, unless they are set to have a distinct widget period, as previously shown. Impacted widgets include the historic and year-over-year widgets.