Dashboards & Visualizations

Postprocess chaining possible in simple XML?

koprai
Explorer

It is great the Splunk 6.2 allows multiple base searches. However I was wondering if postprocess chaining is possible.. That is a post process search is a base search for another post process search. The following is a cooked up dashboard XML that will illustrate what i am trying. I am not getting intended results. Not sure if it is a supported feature

<dashboard>
  <label>TempPostProcessChaining</label>
    <search id="baseSearch">
      <query>|stats count as dummy</query>
    </search>
  <row>
    <panel>
      <title>First Post Process Result</title>
      <table>
        <search base="baseSearch" id="firstPostProcess">
          <query>eval a=dummy+1 | fields *</query>
        </search>
      </table>
    </panel>
  </row>
    <row>
    <panel>
      <title>Second Post Process Result</title>
      <table>
        <search base="firstPostProcess">
          <query>eval b=a+1 | fields *</query>
        </search>
      </table>
    </panel>
  </row>
</dashboard>
0 Karma

martin_mueller
SplunkTrust
SplunkTrust

I'd say no.

The observed behaviour is similar to the old AdvancedXML PostProcess Module - while you could have multiple post processes underneath each other, one would override the other so you would always have base search | post process, never base search | post process 1 | post process 2. You can see this more clearly if you add | eval c = dummy + 10 to your second post process - it is applied, but the first post process is skipped.
The docs aren't terribly clear on this, but they do say "Post-process searches: A search that further modifies results from a base search." Taking that literally, a post process will always modify the base search... exactly what we're observing here.

http://docs.splunk.com/Documentation/Splunk/6.2.3/Viz/PanelreferenceforSimplifiedXML

Got questions? Get answers!

Join the Splunk Community Slack to learn, troubleshoot, and make connections with fellow Splunk practitioners in real time!

Meet up IRL or virtually!

Join Splunk User Groups to connect and learn in-person by region or remotely by topic or industry.

Get Updates on the Splunk Community!

How Splunk AI Assistant Is Transforming Investigations: Insights from .conf26

At .conf26 in Denver, I spent much of my time in conversation with Splunk customers about Splunk AI Assistant. ...

Make Your Machine Data AI-Ready in Splunk

Every team is getting ready for AI agents.   Thursday, November 12, 2026  |  11AM  PST / 2PM EST   ...

Splunk Asynchronous Forwarding Explained

Splunk asynchronous forwarding is often misunderstood as simply setting autoLBVolume. That is not quite right. ...