I’m looking for ideas on how to craft datasets and topics to allow consumers to prompt for YTD, QTD, MTD comparisons of measures. I’ve started working on a simple relative time dimension, but am hoping for something a little more elegant.
Hello Bob,
First of all Welcome to the QuickSight Community.
I am wondering why you would need that unless you don’t have have date field in the data set. user can simply ask information based on this date such as show me XXXX by YTD or MTD or QTD no ? Q should be able provide insight based on the Questions.
Nevertheless, you may see the below link for the best practices on topic.
Hope this helps.
Cheers,
Deep
The dataset has a date field and the current ‘to date’ prompts are not an issue. I have not been able to craft the question in a way that allows me to compare the ‘to date’ values. For example, it’s October 15th and I want to compare this years sales versus the same time frame from the previous year. So the result should be a comparison of 2024 YTD sales to 2023 sales up to October 15th. That would show me where I am in relation to the same time period last year.
Hi @bodonnell,
It’s been awhile since last communication took place on this thread. Since then, have you been able to find a work around for your case or are you still facing similar issues?
When you mentioned that you’ve been unable to compare, what type of question formats have you tried out and what are the responses you’ve received? Sometimes it’s best to try and gain an understanding of how the system is interpreting your question so that you can build in additional context for assistance.
Another option you could explore for this would be to build a calculated field in your q topic. If you were to build a calculated field for your prior year time period, that would be a much more direct way to achieve your outcome.
Let us know if you have any additional questions!
Hi @bodonnell,
Following up here again as it’s been awhile since we last heard from you. Did you have any additional questions or were you able to find a work around for your case?
If we do not hear back within the next 3 business days, I’ll close out this topic.
Thank you!
Morning Brett, thanks for the response. We had done some extensive testing on Period/Date based prompting with less than stellar results. Specifically, the ‘to date’ comparisons rarely worked. The workaround is to specifically call out the date periods expected. Two issues with that… first, it’s not how business users ask questions, and second, a pinned response for that result is not reusable. Another workaround we have considered is using purpose built relative time dimension calculations, but there does not seem to be a way to let the Q users know these values exist, so it would require external training on how to use them in prompts. IMHO, this makes Q less user friendly and less likely to gain traction within an organization. Please feel free to close the topic and thanks again.
@bodonnell , thanks for the feedback. As of now we do not support non-linear date comparisions.
What is the sum of x in 2024 YTD and what is the change to 2023 in the same period
What is the weekly growth of orders last month vs. same month last year
Can you add a few other type questions which is common ask for end users ?
The newly released scenarios should be able to answer these questions, do give it a try if possible , how scenarios work : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bu5Y8Z-Ue3U
Kind regards,
Koushik
Hi @bodonnell
It’s been a while since we last heard from you. If you have any further questions, please let us know how we can assist you.
If we don’t hear back within the next 3 business days, we’ll proceed with close/archive this topic.
Thank you!
Hi @bodonnell,
Since we have not heard back, I’ll go ahead and close out this topic. However, if you have any additional questions, feel free to create a new post and link this discussion for relevant information if needed.
Thank you!