Using getdate for a dimension/measure calculation breaks scheduling

Hi Peter,

Is it necessary that you use the getdate ? you can also get a date diff with table calculation using the function diff_days(start_date, end_date) It returns the number of days between start_date and end_date.

Additionally we could create a calculation in the Explore of the Look you are scheduling, hiding the dimension/measure that contains the getdate from the visualisation, and using the function type if(yesno_expression,value_if_yes, value_if_no) to ‘yes’ when the measure changes data, and ‘no’ when the data has not changed. This will allow the “and results changed since last run” to work as expected.

If you have any questions on this, come to our chat support for more help.

Hey @pmccabe,

I hope all is well! If we are referring to a dashboard, then the option to use a Send this schedule if advanced scheduling option is currently unavailable. Of course, I’ll be sure to relay this feedback to the product team on my end. With that said, we can schedule this dashboard with a delivery schedule that aligns with when we expect information to be updated and the changing results of that datediff field shouldn’t influence it.

Regarding the table calculation on a LookML dashboard. In case this can help achieve your goal and you would like to do some testing, it looks like we can include table calculations in LookML dashboards. I tested this out just to confirm. My LookML Dashboard file looks like this:

- dashboard: date_diff_test

  title: Date Diff Test

  layout: newspaper

  elements:

  - title: Date Diff Test

    name: Date Diff Test

    model: leticia_model_exercise

    explore: orders

    type: table

    fields:

    - orders.created_date

    - orders.days_since_order

    sorts:

    - orders.created_date desc

    limit: 500

    dynamic_fields:

    - table_calculation: calc_date_diff

      label: Calc Date Diff

      expression: diff_days(${orders.created_date}, now())

      value_format:

      value_format_name:

      _kind_hint: dimension

      _type_hint: number

    query_timezone: America/Los_Angeles

    series_types: {}

    row: 0

    col: 2

    width: 20

    height: 17

and the resulting dashboard is below:

You’re absolutely right regarding how the results changed since last run will influence the schedule for a Look with that datediff field. So the best bet here will probably be keeping this as an element on a dashboard and scheduling that dashboard with a Repeating interval trigger or Datagroup Update trigger. Perhaps a datagroup, with a sql_trigger that is set for a time after the custom user attributes script runs, can be created if that script runs at a certain time (or times) a day. Alternatively, we can define a Repeating Interval trigger and set a time to send for after that script is expected to run.

I hope this helps! If you’d like us to take a closer look at your example, feel free to visit us at help.looker.com or contact us via chat support!

Cheers,

Leticia