Spotfire Ideas Portal
I am bringing excel file into Spotfire that has dates as the column names. I have loaded the data into Spotfire by conducting an unpivot transformation on all date columns. When new columns (new dates) are added to the excel file, however, it does not pull these dates automatically into the transformation datastep and the entire table has to be manually replaced. Can there be an enhancement such that Spotfire automatically picks up columns of a specific data types to transform
I think this is a very common situation for folks who do data collection via spreadsheet (data in "wide" format with each column representing a new date period).
Currently, unpivot is limited because you have to specify each column to include in the unpivot. If a new column is added to the source table, you have to modify the unpivot, which limits the sustainability of the analysis.
There is a need to be able to have the unpivot react dynamically to new columns being added to the source file. The only way to do this now is via scripting.
One option is what the OP suggested (toggle to automatically include columns whose title fits a certain data type). Another approach would be to borrow a setting from the table visualization Columns tab and include an "Add New Columns Automatically" to the Unpivot dialog box.
Either way, I support this idea to provide this as native functionality!