Filtering the Data Components in a Dashboard

Filtering scenarios and filter logic

Link relationship between filter controls

Inserting a filter control in a dashboard

Saving and using default values in filter controls

Filter controls are used to filter one or more data components in a dashboard. They can filter based on the fields in the business views the data components are created from.

JDashboard supports three types of filter controls: Text List, Single Value Slider, and Range Slider.

Text List allows you to pick one or more random values from a list and is used with categorical or nominal variables. You can choose one or more values from anywhere in the list and there is no mean or median value calculation.
Single Value Slider allows you to select one single value from a list and suitable for displaying a few values like quarters.
Range Slider allows you to pick multiple sequential values from a list and is used for interval variables such as dates, times, quantity and currency variables where the slider represents the scale from lowest to highest values and the middle represents the median value.

The filters created via filter controls are also referred to as on-screen filters.

Filtering scenarios and filter logic

Filtering based on one field is a common usage. Bind a field to a filter control, and then based on the field to filter the data components created from the same business view as the field. Another special usage is to filter data components created using different business views. In this case you need to choose a common field all the business views contain and select the common field from all the business views to bind them to the filter control. The name of the fields do not need to be the same but the data returned needs to be similar.

After you select values in one or more filter controls in a dashboard, a filter condition based on the selected values of the specified fields will be applied to the designated data components in the dashboard, with each field affecting only the data components based on the same business view as the field. The value selection logic is as follows:

When one value of one field is selected, the filter condition is Field1=SelectedValue1, for example, Country=USA. The filter condition will be applied to the data components that are created using the same business view as the field.
When multiple values of multiple fields in one business view are selected, the filter condition uses AND logic between the fields: (Field1=SelectedValue1 or Field1=SelectedValue2) and (Field2=SelectedValue3 or Field2=SelectedValue4)..., for example, (Country=USA or Country=China) and (Year=2017 or Year=2018). The filter condition will be applied to the data components that are created using the business view.
When multiple values of multiple fields in different business views are selected, the filter condition uses OR logic between the fields: (Field1=SelectedValue1 or Field1=SelectedValue2) or (Field2=SelectedValue3 or Field2=SelectedValue4)..., for example, (Country=USA or Country=China) or (Year=2017 or Year=2018). The filter condition will be applied to all the data components that are created using these business views.

When you bind a filter control with multiple different fields in different data resources, such as Country, P_Country and S_Country, be sure the list of values in each field match so that when you select a value, it will match the appropriate country field in each data resource. That's because in cases like this JReport applies the logic OR for the values, that is Country=SelectedValue1 or P_Country=SelectedValue1 or S_Country=SelectedValue1. Therefore, when Country, P_Country and S_Country are used in different data components you will see the records correctly in each component. If you bind a filter control with multiple different fields in different business views which do not contain the same list of values such as Country, Region and Territory, after you select a value in the filter control, the result will have no matching records for two of the fields and therefore the data components using the same data resources as the two fields will become blank components.

Link relationship between filter controls

By default, all the filter controls applied to the same data components in a dashboard are interlinked. The link relationship is reflected on the filter values dynamically: selecting a value in one filter control will result in that values which do not belong to the selected value, contain the selected value or relate to the selected value are grayed in all the other linked filter controls for distinguishing. For example, there is a filter control based on the field Country and another on City and they both are applied to the same table. When you select USA in the Country filter control, the values in the City filter control will change as follows: if the City filter control has a scrollbar, the cities belong to USA are displayed in the upper area of the filter control and the other cities are put in the lower area and grayed out; if it has no scrollbar, all the values remain their positions and the values not belonging to USA are grayed out. In both cases all the values are still selectable.

When using a filter control, you can determine whether or not to make the filter control apply the link relationship via the Link to Other Filters option.

Below is an example showing the logic of other linked filters:

When

Filter1 is applied to DC1, DC2, and DC3.

Filter2 is applied to DC1.

Filter3 is applied To DC2.

Filter4 is applied to DC2 and DC3.

The result:

For Filter1, other linked filters are Filter2, Filter3, and Filter4.

For Filter2, other linked filter is Filter1.

For Filter3, other linked filters are Filter1 and Filter4.

For Filter4, other linked filters are Filter1 and Filter3

Inserting a filter control in a dashboard

Click Show Resources on the toolbar to display the Resources panel.
From the Toolbox node, drag Filter Control to the destination in the dashboard body. The Insert Filter Control dialog appears.
In the Title text box, input a title for the filter control which will be displayed on the title bar of the filter control.
From the Control Type drop-down list, select the type of the filter control: Text List, Single Value Slider or Range Slider.
The Select Fields drop-down list lists all the group and detail objects in the business views used by data components in the current dashboard. Select the objects of the same data type to bind to the filter control, and then click outside of the drop-down list to close it.

For a text list filter control, after the filter control is created the name of the first selected object will be displayed as the name of the filter control.
By default, all values of the selected objects are used in the filter control. If you want to customize the value list, check Customize Initial Values and customize the values as you want.
- To customize the values for a text list or single value slider:
  Click Fetch Data to select the desired values in the Fetch Data dialog. You can also type in the values manually in the value text box.
  
  To enter a value, input it in one row, and then press the Enter key to start a new row. General text editing operations including copy, paste, cut, backspace, delete and so on are supported. You need to make sure of the accuracy of the formats and values. If the selected objects are of the Date/Time type, you can also click to specify a date and time value from the calendar.
- To customize the values for a range slider:
  Select the start value of the slider from the From drop-down list and the end value from the To drop-down list. If the selected objects are of the Date/Time type, you can also click to specify a date and time value from the calendar.
By default, all filter controls that are applied to the same data components are linked. If you do not want the filter control to be affected by filter controls, unselect Link to Other Filters.

If you have selected a slider control type and the fields bound to the slider are of the Date/Time type, the Special Function drop-down list is available. Apply a special function to the fields if needed.

Special Function	Description
None	All the records that have the same field value will be displayed together as a group.
For each day	The records, of which the field values are in the same day, will be grouped together.
For each week	The records, of which the field values are in the same week, will be grouped together.
For each bi-week	The records, of which the field values are in the same bi-week, will be grouped together.
For each half month	The records, of which the field values are in the same half month, will be grouped together.
For each month	The records, of which the field values are in the same month, will be grouped together.
For each quarter	The records, of which the field values are in the same quarter, will be grouped together.
For each half year	The records, of which the field values are in the same half year, will be grouped together.
For each year	The records, of which the field values are in the same year, will be grouped together.

From the Apply To drop-down list, specify which data components in the dashboard the filter will be applied to.
By default, JReport applies the filter to all the data components created using the business views in which the selected objects are obtained. If you uncheck the data components which are based on the same business view as any selected objects, these objects will not be used in the filter and thus their values will not be listed in the filter control.
Click OK to insert the filter control.

You can now select values from the filter control to filter the dashboard data. If the objects bound to the filter control have the same values, the values are distinctive in the filter control.

For a text list filter control, select the values with which you want to filter the dashboard. A filter condition based on the selected values is then applied to the specified data components in the dashboard.
You can make use of the Ctrl or Shift key to select multiple values. If the values themselves have inter-relationship, after you make the selection, JReport will deal with the rest values to put the related ones on the top and gray the ones that have no relationship with the selected values. The grayed values are still selectable.

To easily locate the values you want in the filter control, click on the name bar to sort the values in the ascending or descending order. You can also make use of the search toolbar to search for the desired values. To display the toolbar, click on the name bar. The button on the name bar is used to cancel the selection of values in the filter control. For detailed usage about the search toolbar, click here.
For a single value slider, specify a value with which you want to filter the dashboard. A filter condition based on the selected value is then applied to the specified data components in the dashboard.
For a range slider, specify a value range with which you want to filter the dashboard data. A filter condition based on the selected value range is then applied to the specified data components in the dashboard.

For the filter controls inserted in a dashboard, you can further edit them if needed. To edit a filter control, click on the component title bar and select Edit Setting from the drop-down menu. In the Edit Filter Control dialog, edit the filter control according to your requirements.

Notes:

When there are more than 300 values in a text list filter control, JReport will use Big Data Loading logic. In this case, the Shift Key for multiple selection cannot work.
Sometimes, when the position of a text list filter control is changed due to layout change, the advanced search toolbar in the filter control may not follow the filter control but stay where it is.
If all the data components in a dashboard that use a business view are deleted, the fields in the business view that have been added in the filter controls in the dashboard will be removed from the filter controls too.

Saving and using default values in filter controls

When the Use Default On-screen Filter Values feature is enabled for dashboards, each end user can save the values specified to the filter controls in a dashboard as the default values for the dashboard and for him. Next time when the user runs the dashboard, the saved values will be applied to the filter controls by default. The default values in filter controls work on a user-dashboard basis.

To save values specified to the filter controls in a dashboard as the default values, click the Options button on the toolbar, go to On-screen Filter Values and then select Save as Default.
To clear the default values that have been saved to the filter controls in a dashboard, click the Options button on the toolbar, go to On-screen Filter Values and then select Clear Default.
To replace the values specified in the filter controls in a dashboard with the saved default values, click the Options button on the toolbar, go to On-screen Filter Values and then select Restore to Default.

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