How to navigate around this dashboard:
- Type the name of a director or actor/actress and/or type a plot keyword, hit enter
- Click on any movie in the table under the search bars (hover over the menu icon "..." for more info)
- The movie title of your selection should show up in the rectangular box (large font), hover over it (also other information about the movie of your choice should be displayed)
- Your movie, if in the right format, should show up in the Wikipedia page underneath (more about this below).
This was a super fun dashboard to make. I had already decided that I was going to make a dashboard on universal search bars and just had to find the right data set (this part of the work always takes the longest). Luckily I came across this movies data set on Kaggle. After massaging the data a bit, I was able to make the dashboard I had envisioned.
Universal Search Bar
The universal search bar isn't actually "universal", but instead, it allows users to search across a defined number of columns. In the case of a movies data set, 2 types of searches stood out for me:
- People, and
- Keywords
In this data set, there are 4 people columns (director, actors 1-3) and 5 plot keyword columns. I will walk through setting up the universal search bar using the people columns.
First, set up a parameter; I called mine "People Search Parameter". Set to "string" and delete the current value.
Then set up a Boolean calculated field, which I called "Universal People Search Filter". Syntax is as follows:
CONTAINS(LOWER([First People Field]),LOWER([People Search Parameter]))
OR
CONTAINS(LOWER([Second People Field]),LOWER([People Search Parameter]))
OR
CONTAINS(LOWER([Nth People Field]),LOWER([People Search Parameter]))
Drag this calculated filed to filter and select only "TRUE", and away we go. Next time anyone types a name into the parameter, anything in these columns that contain the text will show up.
URL Action
To get your URL action to work within your dashboard, simply drag a web page object onto your dashboard. Don't worry too much about the URL that you input here.
Then create a dashboard action by clicking on "Dashboard" → "Actions..." → "Add Action >" → "URL"
I knew I wanted to link to Wikipedia, and needed to know how the links looked before I continued on. So, I first opened a browser and did a test search for a film in Wikipedia, and copied the URL using the same format in the URL field. The format of most recent movies were as follows:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/<Movie Title>_(<Title Year> film)
But the design of a regular webpage was too wide for my tiny blog-sized dashboard. So I went the mobile route:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/<Movie Title>_(<Title Year> film)
An important thing to note is that this format is locked down. If any movies were listed in Wikipedia under a different format, the URL action will result in a page error.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2_Fast_2_Furious
and not
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2 Fast 2 Furious_(2003 film)
Therefore, the URL action did not work on the dashboard. This is something to keep in mind when choosing web pages you want to link to. Web sites that has consistent naming conventions will generally work better, and maximize the success of your URL actions.
https://www.google.ca/search?q=<search term 1>+<search term 2>+<search term n>
In addition to the fields that you have in your data set, you can add other search terms in combination with your fields to better direct your search results, such as:
https://www.google.ca/search?q=<Movie Title>+film
Now that you have your universal search bar and your URL action set up, the rest is just some creative formatting. I hope these tips help you with your next task, and that this dashboard shows how even with a tiny 600 X 800 dashboard, you can still pack a lot in. Keep on playing!
