Limiting Filters to Specific Values with Background Filters

This topic describes how you can leverage background filters to limit what data is exposed to your Viewers or to reduce the amount of filtering a Viewer needs to do.

As a Designer, you can define which of the fields in a filter will be visible to Viewers. Viewers will then be able to use the updated and restricted filter to further filter the dashboard or widget using the available fields.

You can set the background filter on any level of cascading filters. So you can set a background filter at whatever level you like, not only the first one. For example, if you have a cascading filter that looks like this: Country > Region > State > City, you could set the background filter on State so that Viewers can set their own filters on Country and Region, but only on the filters you specify for State and City.

This can be useful in cases where Viewers only require selected data, and then they do not have to search through a long list of fields, or for security purposes in cases where you don't want to expose all the data.

For a short video overview of limiting filters to selected values with a background filter, see below:

Example 1 – Simple List Filter

A filter includes a list of 10 countries. As a designer, you can limit the filter to include only five specified countries. Viewers will see the filter as having only five countries to include or exclude in the filter.

Example 2 – Conditional Filter

Another example requires having only the top five countries by population included in the available list of countries. In this case, Viewers will only see five countries, however, the list of countries will depend on the population sizes and any changes that may affect which countries are in the top five at the given time.

To create a background filter:

• Create a background filter using one of the following methods:

  • In a filter without selected values, open the filter’s menu and click Create background filter. Define your filter settings, and click OK.

    OR

    If you made changes to your filter (either by editing the filter or by selecting values directly in the filter), you can open the filter’s menu, and click Set as background filter.

    The background filter is indicated by a filter icon.

    

To edit a background filter:

1. In the filter’s menu, click Edit background filter.

2. Update the filter settings, and click OK.

To remove a background filter:

• In the filter’s menu, click Remove background filter.

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