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You can display a message when you set the filter:
Instead of:
$w('#PODPlatform').setFilter(newFilter);
You can do something like this:
$w("#PODPlatform").setFilter(newFilter)
.then( () => {
console.log("Dataset is now filtered");
let count = $w("#PODPlatform").getTotalCount();
if(count === 0) {
// display message that no items found
}
} )
.catch( (err) => {
console.log(err);
} );