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I've read the great article on how to create a dynamic dashboard but I'm still missing something (probably obvious). I've assembled a few dynamic and standard shapes together into this dashboard element and have tied it to a Google Sheets doc. When I change the values in the first data row everything looks great - sliders & meters reflect the values in the spreadsheet row conditional formatting changes colors. All good. 

 

kB2h3AllJmgTESFHD_zpKg.pngHowever when I save those grouped shapes as a Custom Shape that I want to reuse over and over on my dashboard things stop working for me. I drag the custom shape onto my canvas and it reflects the values from Row 2 (Row 1 is my header row in the spreadsheet). So I grab Row 3 from the Data Linking area in the upper-left drag it onto the custom shape and see all of the linked data updated successfully in the Group > Data section on the right. But all of the meters and sliders and custom formatting and text labels all stay the same and don't reflect the new data. When I click into a subcomponent of the grouped custom shape (e.g. the People slider) I can see that it's still linked to Row 2 despite the grouped shape being now linked to Row 3's data. 

 

 

Hope this makes sense. How do I ensure that the subcomponents of a grouped shape are tied to the right row in my spreadsheet? I've been able to make this work in the past - I could drag a row from the Data Linking pane to the canvas choose the custom shape that I wanted to represent it and it would just work.

 

 

If I have to drag each cell from the correct row onto each subcomponent then it would actually take more time than just manually changing the text on the diagram. 

 

Hi Dylan thanks for posting! Glad to hear that our Dynamic Shapes article was helpful for you.

You're seeing this behavior because when you drag new data to the grouped custom shape you're actually assigning the data to the overall group rather than the individual dynamic shapes that make up the group. You can assign data to shapes groups or the document as a whole but assigning data to the group does not automatically assign data to all the individual shapes. Unfortunately you would probably have to individually link the data to each shape manually but you may also want to look into using formulas to achieve this. Formulas can be used to set a value by referencing data from other shapes so this might cut down on the amount of manual data assignment you need to do.

I'm sorry for any trouble this might cause. Feel free to let me know if you have any more questions about this. 

Really clear thanks Emma! I had actually experimented with the Formula-based approach but couldn't get the "parent" syntax to work for the slider bars meters or text boxes. Any idea what I'm doing wrong? I've tried all variations I can think of: 



  • =Parent."Maturity"

  • =Parent.@"Maturity"

  • =@Parent."Maturity"


No matter what I try it errors out.

Hi Dylan- without seeing the data in your document I can't say exactly why you are getting that error but one thing to note is that the second half of the formula in brackets ("Maturity" in your screenshot) needs to reference the specific name of the property in your group's shape data that you want to use as the value of the dynamic shape. 


For example- in the GIF below I grouped two dynamic shapes and linked the group to a row from my data-set. I want the 'Quota Attain' property to set the value of my dynamic shapes so I reference that property in my formula to set the value of the dynamic shapes: =PARENT."Quota Attain". This sets the value of each dynamic shape to 9.


I would also recommend checking that the value this formula is calling is not more or less than the minimum and maximum value set for your dynamic shape. For example if I updated the 'Quota Attain' value for this group to 120 I would see an error because the maximum value for these dynamic shapes is set to 100.


 


Hi! I’m Micah from Lucid’s community team. 👋 I thought you, and any others who might come across this topic in the future, might be interested in Lucid’s Data Trusted User Group. This group is made up of knowledgeable users who regularly analyze and visualize data in their work. As part of this group, you’ll have the opportunity to connect directly with Lucid’s product team, gain early access to beta features, and share insights about your needs, shaping the future of Lucid’s data solutions 🎉 You can learn more and request to join here. Thanks!

 

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