External Link Visuals

A link visual enhances your applications by accessing external sources of information. These sources may be either static URL addresses, or dynamic — results of searches to which you pass a name of a variable used in the dataset.

The following steps demonstrate how to create a new link visual for dataset World Life Expectancy [data source samples.world_life_expectancy]. In this exercise, we will pass the variable country to the Wikipedia site.

For an overview of shelves that specify this visual, see Shelves for External Link Visuals.

  1. Start a new visual based on dataset World Life Expectancy [data source samples.world_life_expectancy]; see Creating Visuals.

  2. In the visuals menu, find and click link.

    selecting link chart type

  3. Note that the shelves of the visual changed. The only shelf is URL.

    shelves of url link visual type

  4. In the URL, enter the following text:

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/<<country:Afghanistan>>

  5. Click Refresh Visual.

    The page specified in the URL appears.

  6. Click (pencil icon) next to the title of the visualization to edit it, and enter the new name.

  7. Change the title to World Population - Country UTL.

  8. At the top left corner of the Visual Designer, click Save.

    clicking to save

Link Visuals in Action

Extra set-up is required to see the behavior of a dynamic link visual. You must complete the following tasks:

  • identify an application that uses it, and add the link to that application
  • choose (or add) a chart-type visual in that application to control link display
  • configure click behavior on the visual in the previous step

To use this visual to see the Wikipedia page for a specific country, follow these steps.

  1. Create a new application for this dataset, World Life Expectancy.
  2. Add to it the Bar Visual created in Bar Chart, World Population - Bars.

  3. Click Edit next to the title of the application.

    By default, it should be set to Untitled.

    changing the default title of a visual
  4. Change the title to World Population - Country UTL.

  5. At the top left corner of the Visual Designer, click Save.

    clicking to save
  6. In the application, click icon to edit the bar chart visual.

  7. In Edit mode, left-click on the visual chart, and select Modify click behavior.

  8. In the Pick an app modal window, under To set this selection, pick an app below, select World Life Expectancy.

  9. After the modal window changes, select World Population - Composite.

  10. At the top left corner of the Visual Designer, click Save.

    clicking to save

  11. [Optional] While in Edit mode, to ensure that the settings work,

    • Left-click on the visual.
    • Select Test click behavior.

  12. When using the app World Population - Composite, notice that clicking on the specific bars that represent a country changes the Wikipedia page to match the country.

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