Typically we use "select " filters to filter data. It may be either report filters or overall dashboard filters. Both require a user to pick an option in a dropdown to filter a component.
Component filters allow filtering data on dashboards by clicking on the chart elements rather than using filter dropdown menus. Typically they meant to drill down into more detailed data while looking at aggregated data on charts.
E.g. we have bar chart showing course names as bars and % users completed as values and table underneath with detailed user information, like use fullname, email, completion status, date and other user-related course data. When we click on a bar, which is a course, we get data in a table filtered by that course so we get list of users in that course to see detailed info, (who exactly completed it and who did not)
Componentl filters can be added and used on dashboards only. They can be added to charts only.
To add a component filter build a dashboard first.
- Create new/add an existing chart to a dashboard
- create new /add an existing table to a dashboard
- make sure your chart and table are logically related e.g. in chart you have course names as categories and some aggregated data as values, like Number of enrolled users, % of users completed etc.
- navigate to the filters tab on the dashboard
- On Filters tab find component FIlters section
- hit create and select data element from Source Element drop-down (source element is a data element that will be set as source of the filter)
- in Field Name drop-down select field name that you want to filter by
- in Filtered Element drop-down select dashboard elements that you want to be affected by the filter
- once selected hit ok and "Save Filter"
From this point when you click on a bar on the bar chart, table you selected in previous step gets filtered by the respective course name
Note: if you use Bar chart and add a separator field you can use that as a component filter as well.
The following options are supported for Coponent filter:
- field added as category can be used as a global filter;
- field added as separator can be used as a global filter;
E.g. we have bar chart showing a number of visits per module in courses.
You can combine these data sets with tabular report on a dashboard to be able not only to see visits per module in a course but also be able to drill down into each module and get detailed data by each user in it.