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How do I display a time (e.g. Period Start, Period End, Now) on a Flow dashboard?

Use the Text Chart in Flow

In particular cases, it would be useful to display text on a dashboard. Either to explain a particular chart type implementation on the dashboard, headings that span multiple chart types or to display a date range that the dashboard had rendered for.  This type of chart is highly flexible and has a lot of features.  As such we will discuss each feature in the following sub sections.  

Text chart types can either be configured for Titles or Paragraphs.

The definition of a Text chart consists of the following groups:

General

The General tab is used to define the general layout of the text as well as the default period display and which indicators to display by default.  The General tab consists of Textbox and Period.

Textbox

 

Under the Table section we have the following properties:

  • Back Color – This sets the background area that surrounds the table’s color, the default is the “Window” theme color
  • Left – This sets the padding to the left of the textbox, the default is 8
  • Right – This sets the padding to the right of the textbox, the default is 8
  • Top – This sets the padding to the top of the textbox, the default is 8
  • Bottom – This sets the padding to the top of the textbox, the default is 8

Period

Refer to the general “Period” chart properties section for more information. 

Segments

Segments are used to group related information together.  The Segments tab is used to configure these segments. Segments of text can have separate formatting properties, like to have one segment bold and another not.  Segments can be added, removed and reordered in the Segments tab.  Segments have the following properties:

  • Text – This sets the section’s title text
  • Font Color – This sets the font color of the section’s title text
  • Font Size – This sets the size of the section’s title text
  • Font Bold – This sets whether the text in the title cell is bold
  • Font Italic – This sets whether the text in the title is italicized
  • Alignment – This sets the text alignment either left, right or in the center
  • Wrap – Must word wrap be applied if the text is longer than the width of the text box

 

Additional context - Period Start, Period End and Now

To allow for dynamic parameters, one can use the period start and period end placeholders in the Text value section. These will be replaced by the start and end time as configured in the period section on the chart.

This will allow to load dynamic date time text based on a dynamic time range.

  • [PeriodEnd("HH:mm")] – Will be replaced by the end time of the period with the specified Date/Time Formatting applied
  • [PeriodStart("HH:mm")]– Will be replaced by the start time of the period with the specified Date/Time Formatting applied
  • [PeriodEndUTC("HH:mm")] – Will be replaced by the UTC end time of the period with the specified Date/Time Formatting applied
  • [PeriodStartUTC("HH:mm")]– Will be replaced by the UTC start time of the period with the specified Date/Time Formatting applied
  • [Now("HH:mm")]– Will be replaced by the time that the report had been generated with the specified Date/Time Formatting applied