Filter data (use dimensions)

Owned by Helen Gosper
Last updated: Nov 24, 2022 by Denise McGettigan

The main way to filter data is to use dimensions. After you filter the data by a dimension, more functions and options become available, for example, you can perform a search to further filter the data or select and focus on specific rows of data.

A dimension is a group of data and an entity is a value within a dimension. For example, a dimension is Country and the entities are Australia, the UK and the USA.

Dimensions are groups of data that you can use to filter the whole dataset. The dimensions that are available depend on the underlying database. They display in the panel on the left of the grid. For example:

  • In a Sales database you might have dimensions such as Customers, Products, Sales Reps, Regions, Vendors and so on.

  • In an Inventory database you might have dimensions such as Supplier, Warehouse, Country, and so on. 

Some dimensions have a subset of dimensions grouped underneath them, for example, the might have the Product Class and Product Group might be subsets of the Product dimension. 

Click a dimension to filter the data in the grid and see a list the entities in that dimension. The dimension button turns blue to identify it as the currently selected dimension.

For example, suppose you are viewing your Sales database and want to take a closer look at your customers, to see which customers generate the most sales revenue. When you click the Customer dimension, a list of customers displays in the grid.

After you filter by one dimension and focus on some data, you can filter by another dimension. You can repeat this action to, in effect, filter by multiple dimensions and drill down further into your data.

View filtered data in the grid

When you filter the data by a dimension (and condition), the grid updates and looks and behaves different to the Summary view. The key characteristics are as follows:

  1. The selected dimensions displays in blue.

  2. Properties (dimension metadata, such as Name and Code) display as columns. If the data in the Code column is blue, it indicates a link  is available. You can select other properties to display or create your own custom property via the Properties menu.

  3. Measures (data values relating to dimensions) display as columns, for example the Total Revenue or Current column. By default, the data is sorted by the first measure column, in ascending order. You can then sort the data in other ways. You can change the measures and their format via the Measures menu.

  4. Cells that do not contain data are shaded blue.

  5. Negative figures display in red.

See Work with the grid to learn how to sort data, freeze properties, view the record count and more.

Remove a filter

The process to remove a filter depends on they action you have taken:

  • If you filter by one dimension and then want to filter by another dimension, so long as you have not selected anything in the grid, you can simply click the other dimension. You can quickly switch between dimensions and the grid updates accordingly.

  • If you filter by a dimension and select rows in the grid, then select another dimension, a filter is applied to the first dimension and the number of selected rows displays on that dimension button. Click the X on the dimension button to remove the first filter.

To completely reset the data, click the Reset button.