NOTE: If you set up a dashboard and global filters prior August 29, 2023 please make sure you take the following steps:
1. Open your dashboard and hit edit
2. Edit a chart you have Global filter added to by clicking edit chart under settings
3. Navigate to Global filter tab and hit Edit Global filter
4. In "Apply to Components" drop-down select report/chart you want to be able to filter with global filter and hit ok and hit "Save Filter". Save chart and Save dashboard.
A global filter is set and can be used now.
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.
Global 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)
Global filters can be added and used on dashboards only. They can be added to charts only.
To add a global 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.
- make sure the table includes course name as a column (having course name added as select filter to that table is optional)
- edit chart dataset
- On Filters tab find Global FIlters section
- hit add filter by clicking "+" icon next to Global FIlters label
- in drop down select the available field that you are going to filter dashboard components by
- select dashboard component and column that will be filtered by your global filter
- once selected hit ok and "create Filter"
- Save your dataset
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