Funnel time frame change not updating on the dashboard

[liyiy]

Bug description

Please describe.
If this affects the front-end, screenshots would be of great help.

After updating a funnel's time frame from All time to 90 days, the insight itself updates but does not save to the dashboard correctly, rendering an incorrect old view

**note: I haven't been able to reproduce this error myself, I encounter a different 502 bad gateway error instead actually

Expected behavior

Updating a dashboard insight should render it correctly in the dashboards view.

How to reproduce

Environment

• PostHog Cloud
• self-hosted PostHog, version/commit: please provide

Additional context

Thank you for your bug report – we love squashing them!

[macobo]

@paolodamico It'd be great if your team could take a look here - I think you should have enough context to own dashboards!

[neilkakkar]

I spent a while last night gathering context for this. More specifically, the issue seems to be that updating specific dashboard item date frames doesn't reflect on the dashboard, when the dashboard itself has a different date filter.

Easier to explain in code, so I wrote a test for it, but haven't yet managed to fix it.

It appears to be a feature request more than a bug: "Allow dashboard item time filters to be saved independently from dashboard time filters" - but when dashboard time filters are updated, update all item time filters as well.

Not enough context to decide the approach myself. The test, though, is here: #5395

[paolodamico]

We're happy to take this on but based on @neilkakkar's work it sounds like you may already have a head start on this? Want us to pick it up?

When you talk about the context for the approach @neilkakkar do you mean UX-wise? As in how do global dashboard filters should override local filters? Just of the top of my head I think in general we should respect the most recent changes. I wonder if should introduce an option to let you switch between individually set filters and the global filter configured for the entire dashboard. Thoughts @clarkus ?

[clarkus]

Does the work happening at #3408 solve for this job? A user could click through the graph on the dashboard to the insight detail view to do any deeper analysis or explore different time ranges.

It appears to be a feature request more than a bug: "Allow dashboard item time filters to be saved independently from dashboard time filters" - but when dashboard time filters are updated, update all item time filters as well.

This could be really clever and powerful, but also really hard to communicate and really confusing for users. I would advocate for a simpler approach and default dashboards to fresh, recent time ranges (for example, the last 7 days, the last 24 hours, etc). The dashboard time context should be constant across all the graphs on the dashboard.

I could also be misunderstanding the problem we're trying to solve here. Is this a case where dashboards should also serve as tools for comparing unlike time ranges? I was seeing comparison ranges in insights as the solution for that, but there might be more to it? My biggest concern is that it's not obvious that a dashboard is reflecting multiple time ranges and a user draws conclusions thinking that all graphs share the same time range.

[neilkakkar]

I agree with @clarkus , it reflects some of my own thinking.

@paolodamico : I have so far just done the investigation to get to the core issue. About fixing / deciding not to do it, leaving it up to you?

More context on the use case: https://posthog.slack.com/archives/C01HZB27BGX/p1627898599000100?thread_ts=1627395111.001800&cid=C01HZB27BGX

[paolodamico]

UX-wise I'd like to propose this approach: user has the option to set a global dashboard time range or keep it in "Custom" / individual time ranges (in which the saved time range for insight is applied). Thing is that with #3408, dashboard items will now be accessible standalone and it'd be pretty confusing if their timeframe changes from a dashboard config (it further lends itself to more edge cases such as if a single insight is in multiple dashboards).

So if a dashboard has a global custom time range, that would prevail as the time range for all items, but only for that dashboard.

Thoughts?

[macobo]

That's exactly how it works currently AFAIK - we store dashboard-specific filters (e.g. time range) in the dashboard object and merge it with the items config. :)

[clarkus]

To make sure I understand how this works:

• A user creates multiple insights with different time contexts.
• Those insights are added to the same dashboard
• By default, that dashboard shows each insight with its time context
• If a user changes the date for the dashboard at a global level, all insights would update to share that time context

Is that accurate? Or is it that once an insight is on a dashboard it defers to the dashboard's time context?

[paolodamico]

Ok, so your scenario is correct @clarkus. However, there's the edge case where you have a dashboard with a configured global timeframe and afterwards you add a new insight. In this case, when you add it to the dashboard, it will also reflect the dashboard's global config.

So I see two UX issues with what we currently have today:

• When you set a global time range in a dashboard it seems to affect the individual insight's timeframe when you open it from that dashboard (i.e. when you open it, it has the dashboard's timeframe as opposed to the individually set). As we introduce saved insights, this could cause confusion as the timeframe would change depending on how you're opening the insight.
• The "Custom" label does not communicate well that it means you're using the individually configured timeframes. Further, it's not clear that if you've set a global timeframe you can go back to individual timeframes by setting this option again (which btw works perfectly 😁)