Feature request: Support for Time Unit Selection (seconds, minutes, hours etc) in Interval Field for Modular Inputs

[jaykukadiya]

Description

First of all, thank you for building and maintaining the Universal Configuration Console. it's been incredibly helpful in simplifying Splunk Add-on development.

I'm currently maintaining a few UCC-based add-ons, and we've received feedbacks from customers regarding the input interval configuration. The current implementation of the interval field supports only seconds, which can be confusing or unintuitive for users who prefer specifying polling intervals in minutes or hours.

Add support for a dropdown or unit selector (e.g., seconds, minutes, hours etc) alongside the interval input field in the modular input configuration UI.

Proposed Behavior:

• The user should be able to input a value (e.g., 5) and select the desired time unit (seconds, minutes, hours) from a dropdown.
• Internally, the selected value can be normalized to seconds (for compatibility with Splunk’s expectations).

Example UI:
Interval: [ 5 ] [seconds ▼]

Use Case:

• Improves user experience by allowing more natural and readable configuration.
• Reduces confusion for non-technical users or those unfamiliar with the requirement to convert everything into seconds.

Thank you for considering this request!

[hetangmodi-crest]

Hi Jay,
Thank you for reaching out to us. In case where you have complex interval inputs you can always use cron schedule instead of specifying the interval in seconds. Please let me know if that suffices your use case or not. Reference

[jaykukadiya]

Hi Hetang,

Thanks for your response!

So As per the stakeholders’ request, the goal is to make the input interval configuration simpler and more user-friendly by allowing users to specify it in hours (e.g., 1, 1.5, 10). According to them, using cron expressions is even more complex than specifying the interval in seconds, so the focus is on keeping the input as straightforward as possible.

To support this approach, I’ve introduced a new field called interval_proxy, where users can specify the interval in hours. When the configuration is saved, this value is automatically converted into seconds (e.g., 3600, 5400, 36000) and stored in the existing interval field (hidden in UI), which Splunk uses to schedule inputs. Both interval_proxy and interval are saved in the configuration.

On the inputs page, we’ll display the value from interval_proxy to provide a clearer and more intuitive experience for users, while the actual scheduling logic will continue to rely on the interval field which is in seconds.