Custom Date Filters on Einstein Analytics / Tableau CRM

A while back we got that fancy Date widget that allowed us to automatically filter our dates by many pre-defined periods. It’s really handy but it has its cons. Some of them are:

• The list of time periods is too long.
• Not all the periods are relevant for all use cases.
• You can’t pick and choose what periods to use, you can only turn all of them off.

What’s my method to provide a better fitting date filter for each use case? I use Static Steps or Custom Queries. After the Winter 20 release, it’s much easier to build them directly in the UI.

Using a Custom Query you can totally match your use case and provide a more meaningful experience. You can also increase the functionality of your dashboards. I will show you how.

The first thing we need to understand is how the date filters work both in SAQL and Compact mode.

Here you can see the structure of a date filter set for Year to Date in Compact Mode:

Notice the highlighted elements. For us to make it dynamic, we have to use bindings to change the Start-End (year-day) periods and the corresponding values.

Here is the same filter but in SAQL mode: