That's some next level button!

One of the knocks on dashboards is that they give you some good information on what is or what was, but don't help you know what to do. In a sales organization, 'what to do' generally means pipeline management. A typical pipeline tab might look something like:

Nice and clean, right? Some good spot info along the top. The stacked bar chart is a nice histogram of your possible future revenue. Finally, some detail info at the bottom. The end user can click around, filter down to their territory, and see some good info. They are practicing 'data discovery' just like we want them to.

You sit back, proud of yourself, thinking, "You recognize the skills, so I don't want nobody calling me son or kid or sport or nothing like that." But there's some next level stuff going on slick, and I need to tell you something about all your skills. As of right now, they mean precisely... zilch.

The next level is to help your users get to actionable info and give them a reason to come back as often as possible. In this case, one click to show the opportunities that are close to close. For this, 'close to close' is defined as an opportunity that has an anticipated close date that is less than 30 days from today.

Overview

• A button will toggle the pipeline between all opportunities and only those that are expected to close in the next 30 days
• The button will select a date range and set a variable
• The variable controls two 'nested' variables
• Now your skills mean the opposite of zilch

'Select in Field' Action

A simple use for a button is to select a value in a field. For example, you could set a date:

If you want to select multiple values, simply separate them with a | (pipe character). For this exercise, we need to select a range of dates based on today. It's a little trickier, but not to bad. Instead of a field value, we're going to enter a search string, in the field cleverly called 'Search String':

     ='=[Calendar.Date]<=Today()+30'

• Remember, anything between the single quotes is treated as a string
• That string resolves as any dates between today and 30 days from now
• This is one of those places that an '=' makes a big difference
• When you build this, the field and function won't be colored; the red and blue above is for clarity
• While this is kind of cool, it ain't Next Level; you could figure this out in the QlikView Community

Next Level is using the button to toggle between 'All' and 'Close to Close'.

Step One - Create Three Variables

1. vClose - No Definition or Constraints
2. vCloseYes - Enter '=[Calendar.Date]<=Today()+30' as the Definition (DO NOT enter the lead '=' like you did in the Search String box) 
3. vCloseNo - Enter ' ' as the Definition

Step Two - Button Actions

First, create a Set Variable action ( Add > External > Set Variable ):

1. Enter vClose in the Variable box
2. Enter =If(vClose = vCloseYes, vCloseNo ,vCloseYes) in the Value box 

This action will set the definition of vClose. If it's currently vCloseYes, it will change it to vCloseNo.

Next, add an action to Select in Field:

1. Enter your date field in the Field box
2. Enter =$(vClose) in the Search String box

$ Sign expansion is the magic that will replace the variable with the nested variable value that will select and deselect your date values. Now that's some Next Level Sh*t!

Step Three - Create Your Title

We've done this before, but as a review:

Step Four - Repeat as Needed

Using this new trick and adding another object or two gets us a new Pipeline tab that users will want to come back to over an over!

Finally...

It was 1997. July. Roswell, New Mexico. 50th anniversary of the Aliens, man! I was there. I was there! I mean the worldwide premier of Men in Black in a theater in Roswell! New Mexico, man!