Date parameter in text box - download issue

Hi team,

I have a report which I have set up a heading title which uses a date parameter (a reporting week starting). In the visual on the dashboard the text displays fine, but when I download to PDF the report appears to be an Epoch date.

Dashbaord:
image

PDF download:
image

How do I stop this happenning?

Thanks,
Q

Hello @QSCommUser , thanks for posting into the community.

In this case the behaviour you are observing is because the date time parameters are stored in timestamp format (notice that parameters are also commonly used in URLs so having a format that is simple to enconde (an integer in this case).

Here what you can do in order to have the expected format is

  1. Create an insight visual
  2. Close the menu that asks you to choose the insight type (click on theāœ–ļø)
  3. Click on the image button
  4. In the editor type << (this will open the calculation editor)
  5. In the calculation enter the code that you see below:
formatDate(${dateParameter},'yyyy-MM-dd')

This should format the date as a string and should show it as so in the email reports.

Hope it helps, please mark this solution as solved if thatā€™s the case also to help other members of the community., otherwise let us know.

Happy dashboarding!

1 Like

@EnriqueS - thank you very much for the above.

I have created the insight - but what am I supposed to do with this now? Style and shape it, then place it over where I previously had the date parameter in the text box?

If so, it feels like a rather long winded way around. If you are able to use parameters in the text box, then why not have the ability to display / download the data without the above work around?

BTW - I have done the above and it appears to work.

Thanks,
Q

1 Like

Hello, yes, I agree that the solution is more complex than just using the text visual. For that reason I will open an internal ticket to see if we can modify its behavior or otherwise add it as a feature request.

Thanks you very much.

1 Like

Hi @EnriqueS - thanks for the follow up.

Great - looking forward to see if this behaviour can be enhanced!

Hello @QSCommUser , hope you are doing well.

The service team has deployed a new release that improves the handling on dates for the text visual. Can you check if you can now get the dates in the expected format in the reports?

Thank you, regards.

2 Likes

Thanks @EnriqueS we all are waiting this feature to enable in QuickSight.

Hi @EnriqueS I have checked but not able to formatting in Text Box.

Hi @EnriqueS,

Thanks for the update. I will check in a little while.

Can you confirm if this was released over the weekend? If so, I suspect it has introduced a bug as Iā€™m now having an issue with the download of my bar charts. They are now displaying in 000ā€™s.

Dashbaord grahpic:
image

Download graphic:
image

Thanks,
Q

1 Like

Hello @QSCommUser , in this case you donā€™ need to format the Text box, just add the date field and then export it to see if now you get the desired output.

In my case I did a test and I was able to get the expected results (both for a date parameter added to a text box and for a vertical bar chart.

If you still have problems please open a support case so we can review it, thanks.

1 Like

Hi @EnriqueS

Thanks for the above.

My issue was not with the text box itself and I was rasing another issue I was seeign with bar charts in my existing report. For some reason the behaviour changed over around the time of my last post.

I have gone back into my dashboard and have had to make changes in the field I have in the ā€˜Valuesā€™ box.

Click drop down - Format - More Formatting options - Units - (previously set to Default) now need to be set to ā€˜No Unitsā€™ for it to display how I would like (same as the screen shots).

My values are all below 50 - so I need the vlaues to show as 15, 16, 20 etc. rather that 00.01K, 00.02k etc.

This is not behaviour I have seen previously.

Thanks,
Q