Add columns to interactive table as expression

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1

Hi,

To make interactive table mode dynamic than it is today, my suggestion is to add a feature to add Expression as new column in inteactive table widget.
So Expression column can be used to:

  • Compare Other columns value (ex: difference between 2 dates or quantity)
  • Display Icon / image based on text status
  • Add boolean is a record creation date is today
  • …
2

Would the expression column need to be dynamically updated, i.e. via an automation? If so, why not just make it a table column that you display in your interactive table and have the automation take care of it?

If not, wouldn’t it just be a table column that your app populates based on some trigger logic?

3

+1-- Calculated fields are a huge pain point/gap currently which makes my app suites significantly more complex to build, test, and maintain.

Many potential solutions:

  • Formulas at the table/db level (probably best case but complex)
  • Live updating interactive tables (dangerously compute heavy)
  • Able to select a record from a table analytic where expressions are already available (seems the most likely)

However, @jmlowden until more pricing information is provided I would strongly advise against using automations to manifest calculated columns.

4

The good example to illustrate our need, is to calculate the age of a product.
I have one column in my table that stores the “start date” and I need to calculate the age from this “start date”.
If I store this information I need to add a new recalculated date column to be sure that the Age value is correct. Updated date would not be enough as Age column might not be updated in last record update.

I would prefer a dynamic referesh so the data is refreshed when Table is displayed and age can be dynamically recalculated without storing the value anywhere.
Based on this calculation I woulb be able to display a Warning (dynamically) is the age is above a limit (risk of out of date)

Automation approach is not triggered by record change only but formula between sotred value in table and current date (in the example above).
So only applicable automation trigger would be on a schedule.
And on top of this, the number of records to update would be so high.

5

A boy can dream :grinning:

6

Hey folks,

thanks for all the good inputs. A few comments from the Tulip side here:

We definitely see and share the perspective on the value of calculated fields that can bring. As you all probably know, an @danielpomeranz also hinted at in his “Option 3”, you can already do calculated fields in Tulip analyses. So if you don’t need to select the data from the table but the core use case is visualizing it, you can use that today.

We are right now working on bringing CURRENTDATEANDTIME() as a function to the expression editor in analytics that will extend the capabilities there to support use cases like the one @thomas.riehl has mentioned (“Record creation is today”), “this item is overdue” or “this has been in progress for this long” - among others.

Beyond this, we are investigating approaches to enable deeper integration of analyses into apps so that data can be selected from them.

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7

Thanks for the insight.
Calculated columns do have more usecases than these date related ones:

  • Formatting data for better readability (e.g. from external sources / removing characters)
  • Calculating differences, percentages, sums…
  • Boolean if measurement is in tolerance
  • …
8

@thorsten.langner Yes, 100% agreed. That’s what I was trying to say in the first paragraph. Seems like my message was a bit ambiguous here.

I just wanted to explicitly point out the upcoming changes that will enable more in analytics beyond what is already possible with expressions today :slight_smile:

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