Extending Search - Implementing Splunk: Big Data Reporting and Development for Operational Intelligence - page 153

After clicking on Save , our macro is now available for use. We can use it like this:
sourcetype="impl_splunk_web" user=mary `webtransactions`
webtransactions is enclosed by backticks. This is similar to the usage of backticks
on a Unix command line, where a program can be executed to generate an argument.
In this case, `webstransactions` is simply replaced with the raw text defined in the
macro, recreating the query we started with.
Creating a macro with arguments
Let's collapse the entire search into a macro that takes two arguments, the user
and a value for maxpause .