Google Analytics Tool End Date Doesn't Update

[ryan_venter27]

If anyone is able to help me figure out a solution to this issue, I would be eternally grateful.

TLDR: The Google Analytics Tool allows you to specify a date range to pull data from. One option is 'Year to Date'. If I were to run a workflow with this setting today, it would pull 1/1/2020 to 5/10/2020. However, if I were to run it, for example, on 5/20/2020, the end date in the tool would not update. It would still pull from 1/1/2020 to 5/10/2020.

The Situation: I am trying to pull a large amount of data from Google Analytics on a daily basis, with each run of the workflow pulling from 1/1/2020 to whatever the day is that I run it on.

The Circumstances: The Google Analytics Tool allows you to specify a range of dates you would like to pull data for. One such option is 'Year to Date', exactly what I am looking for. Selecting this option, the interface updates to show the range of 1/1/2020 to the current date:

Ideally, whenever I run this workflow in the future, the end date would update to whatever date I run it on. Unfortunately . . . . . . .

The Problem: It doesn't. Regardless of what option I select from the 'Preset Date Range' dropdown menu, this end date does not update when I rerun the flow days after I set it up. For example, if I were to run the flow on 5/20/2020, the range would still be 1/1/2020 to 5/10/2020, instead of 1/1/2020 to 5/19/2020. 

Why This is Important: My workflow is utilizing 15 - 20 of these Google Analytics tools, and will be run daily once it is finished. I would give anything to avoid having to manually reset the date ranges for each tool, every single day, for every single run of the workflow.

Other People's Thoughts: With this issue having plagued my mind for several weeks now, I've attempted to look for solutions already out there. Unfortunately, I have found very little on this issue. Some of the articles I have found are here, here, and here. Having read these articles and discussions, I am pessimistic about my chances in finding a solution to this issue as it would appear the tool simply does not allow you to pass an updated date in for the 'end' date.

My Current Workflow: Having tried numerous methods, the current one I am following comes from this discussion. I've set up two Date tools to select the range I would like to see, and I've connected them to Action tools to update the 'start' and 'end' dates in my Google Analytics Tools:

The Action tool to update the 'start' date is configured as follows (blacked out info is sensitive):

The Action tool to update the 'end' date is configured as follows (blacked out info is sensitive):

Having set this flow up, run it countless times, triple-checked outputs, and adjusted certain components, I have yet to see an output with the end date reflecting the current date.

Conclusion: I'm not sure if there is a solution to this problem, but if anyone has any ideas, I would love to hear them. Overcoming this issue is important for me to continue working on this project, and to keep my sanity intact. Thank you for reading and I cannot emphasize how excited I am to hear other people's thoughts!

[BrandonB]

When you are using the interface tools and selecting the dates, are you running the workflow as an analytic app? If you click the regular run button it will just pass the values through that are loaded into the tool. 

I think that you are on the right track with the macro, but maybe you want to use control parameters rather than interface tools. You can use the DateTimeNow() function to pull today's date and you can set the start date as

ToString(DateTimeYear([DateTimeNowFieldYouCreated])) + "-01-01"

[jessarthur]

I am also struggling with this issue in my workflows. I'd love to know if anyone has found a successful and scalable solution. 

[BrandonB]

@jessarthur the solution is to use the approach in turning it into a macro and using the start and end date options to pass date values as described above. However, you need to make sure that you choose the custom date range option instead of today/yesterday/etc.