Parameters overview

  • Updated

You can reference parameters in Analytics inside any exploration (funnel, path, and so on) or a modeling artifact such as a derived column, a cohort, or a metric. Visualizations utilizing modeling artifacts such as derived columns can utilize parameters within the visualization and the underlying derived columns. Parameters are a highly versatile mechanism for fine-tuning visualizations.

These parameters can be connected to your dashboards using parameter tiles, and you can use the values inside the dashboard.

Parameters are available in the following explorations:

and in the following modeling artifacts:

Parameter types​

There are four different types of parameters that you can create in Analytics.

  • Column values
  • Custom values
  • Time range
  • Time grain

You can only create time range and time grain parameters as dashboard parameter tiles.

In analytics, time grain refers to the level of time-based aggregation used to analyze data. It determines how data points are grouped over time, such as hourly, daily, weekly, or monthly. Choosing the right time grain helps identify trends, patterns, and seasonality in the data at the appropriate level of detail.

time-grain-analytics.png

Create parameters in Analytics

There are multiple ways to create parameters in Analytics.

Create parameters with pull-out drawers

You can use the pull-out drawers from all the explorations and model artifacts.

  1. From an exploration or model artifact, click expand shelf.
  2. Select the Parameters tab.
  3. Click Add.
  4. Enter the parameter information and click Create Parameter.

    opti-params-ov-1.gif

Create parameters with Filters section

You can create inline parameters using the Filters section in any exploration. 

  1. Go to any exploration, dashboard, or model artifact and go to the Filters section.
  2. Select the Parameters tab, type in the name of the parameter you want to add in the search bar, and press Enter.
  3. Analytics creates a parameter in the background and automatically maps it to a related column. You can see this within the pull-out drawer where you can configure your parameters.

    opti-param-ov-2.gif

Query filtering with parameters

Query filtering using parameters is one of the most common use cases. To simplify this, Analytics has a first-class UX to perform query filtering within dashboards. This ensures there is no confusion between query filtering and parameter tile UX.

When users define a dashboard parameter tile, Analytics suggests all the currently defined parameters across all dashboards and other parameter tiles.

While defining a new parameter in the context of a visualization tile, Analytics prompts users to specify a default value for that parameter so Analytics can render the visualization immediately without further input from the user.