Introduction

Enhance the visual appeal of your dashboard by integrating customizable filters that seamlessly integrate with the Sisense Dashboard filters shelf. Add capability by configuring filters to apply to the whole dashboard or to selected widgets, allowing side-by-side comparisons and better data storytelling.

It's all possible with Adaptive Filters and configuration is made simple through the widget design panel with a no-code approach, allowing for flexibility in functionality, aesthetics, and colour schemes. The filters support multiple selection, single selection, and date range selection options.

Everything from colors, padding, alignment, font-size to hiding the heading if desired, or changing the sort order, is at your finger tips. This is a well used Sisense add-on and the options have been developed based on customer requests.

The same dimension can be used with different filtering by applying our filters to specific widgets rather than the whole dashboard. This opens up big possibilities such as side-by-side comparisons

Date Picker supports US and International date formats. Single-Select can be forced to remain single-select. Multi-Select includes great features such as:

• Displays the selections and adds a +x more if more selections are made than will fit in the space.

• Places selected items at the top of the list (so you can deselect something without needing to search for it).

• Allows for searching of items by typing in the first few letters.

Customer-driven advanced functionality such as the ability to set the widget not to show certain options that were returned. For example, you may not want your dropdown to display an NA record.

The ability to set the path through specific or multiple fact tables to display exactly the options you want users to choose from (critical when RLS has been applied on a connected dimension).

Getting Started

Before Installing this Add-on, please make sure you've installed and configured the RAPID Plugin Manager.

Download the latest RAPID BI Plugins from the Members Area.

More information can be found here: https://www.rapidbi.com.au/members/index.php?/Knowledgebase/Article/View/getting-started

Installation

1. Download the plugin

2. Extract the zip file to `\Plugins` folder in Sisense (File Manager can be accessed via. Admin > Server & Hardware > System Management > File Manager (top right hand corner))

3. Ensure that the RAPID Plugins Manager has also been installed and enabled in the addons page.

4. After rebuild, the plugin should be accessible through the advanced widget editor. You will need to refresh your browser.

How to use

Adding Widget to Dashboard

1. On a dashboard, select the + Widget button in the top right hand corner

2. When the New Widget Prompt appears, select Advanced Configuration in the bottom left hand corner.

3. When the Widget Editor appears, select the widget type in the top left hand corner and select the RAPID Filter plugin.

Widget Overview

Below is an image outlining the key areas of the initial Widget Editor view.

1. Items Panel

This panel can contain either Dimensions OR Measures, but not both.

The designer can add items that their end users can use to switch between existing items widgets on the dashboard.

We can also add formulas as items in this panel.

The Switcher relies on the items title to know what widget items to switch out on the dashboard.

e.g. A widget on the dashboard contains 'CountryName' in it's default state. Because 'CountryName' is included in the Adaptive Switcher items, when we select 'TeamManager' above, the widgets item will switch from CountryName to TeamManager.

2. Widget Preview

This panel previews what the Adaptive Filters will look like on the dashboard. It is affected by the styling changes the designer makes on the design panel.

3. Design Panel

This panel allows configuration of the Adaptive Filters.

It allows the designer to change styling settings, header details and configure advanced functionality (such as selecting specific widgets to target or ignore).

Adding Items to Widgets

To add fields to the filter widget, navigate to the left items panel and select the 'Add +' option. This will bring up a selection box with the fields available to choose from. 

Select your required field such as 'CountryName' in the above example, this will add the items to the widget. 

To see your filter, you must click the yellow 'apply' button in the top right, then refresh your browser - this is a known bug that is easily solves through this step.

After refreshing your browser, click the pencil icon above the filter widget to continue to edit your widget.

Switching between Items on Widgets

To switch between items on the filter widget, the user can navigate to where the filter is located and click on the down arrow or anywhere on the grey area below. This will bring up the selection panel where you can choose which values you would like displayed on your dashboard or associated widget. If the "Force Single Select' option is not enabled, naturally the filter will allow multiple value selections. Any items already selected will appear at the top of the list.

Setting up Widget Include / Exclude Lists

To exclude an item from your filter widget, click on the pencil icon above the filter widget to enter widget editor. 

Navigate to the right hand panel, and ensure design is selected from the header.

Select Advanced from the subheadings, under the 'Exclusion Member', enter the value you would like to exclude.

In the instance below, we have excluded Belgium from the filter, and it will no longer be visible in the filter selection options:

Design Options

The adaptive filter comes with many design options available. To implement these design options, click on the pencil icon above the filter widget.

Once in the widget editor view, navigate to the right hand panel and click on the 'design' header. This header gives four options, general styling, header styling, dropdown styling and advanced. 

Within the general styling, you can adjust:

• Widget header - shown or hidden, which can be seen in the top left 'Adaptive Filter by Country'
• Dropdown header - shown or hidden, which can be seen as the white on blue ground 'Country Filter' above the dropdown.
• Rounded Corners - The slider can be adjusted for more or less rounded corners - The below filter has roundest corners applied. 
• Padding - Users can select how much padding space they would like around their widget on the top, left, right and bottom
• Width - Adjust how much space the widget takes up in it's tile. The below widget is set to 50%, meaning it will take up half the assigned tile space.
• Alignment - Align the widget to the left, center or right of the assigned tile. 

Within the header styling, you can adjust:

• The header title
• Heading background colour to match your other widgets/dashboard.
• Heading text colour
• Font Size - Small, Medium or Large
• Alignment - Left, Center or Right.

Within the dropdown styling, you can adjust:

• Dropdown title - which has been changed to 'Country' on the below filter
• A range of colour options to match your widgets/dashboard - Placeholder, background, detail, font, selected and border.
• Dropdown Mode - Box option or check - below shows an example of checked.
• Force Single Selection - This option will allow users of the filter to only select one filter at a time. This will also revert the filter back to the box dropdown mode. 
• Show Select All - Gives the option for users to select all available variables in the filter. 
• Dropdown Sort Order - Sorts filter options to ascending or descending order A-Z or Z-A, or none.
• Alignment - Designers can change the alignment of their dropdown title to left, center or right.

Within the advanced setting, you can:

• Exclude values from your filter, as mentioned earlier.
• Apply this filter to the whole dashboard or individual widgets - To apply to an individual widget, select the widget option. Below you will be prompted to choose a widget ID for the filter to apply to. To make applying to widgets easier, give each widget on your dashboards an easily recognisable name. 

• The last option is 'Fact Link' - This option allows the user to choose the specific fact table they would like their filter to filter to. To do this, enable Fact Link and an option to choose your fact table will arise on the left hand panel. Select a fact from the table you would like the data to come. You can add more than one Fact Link.

Advanced Usage

Additionally to the advanced features in the previous section, the user can also add sub-filters and use filters to react off one another. 

The user can create a main filter by following the previous steps, but additionally selecting to not be filtered by dashboard filters in the widget editor design section.

This filter will then not be effected by other filters. This has been done in our example below by creating a main filter using a region variable.

To add sub-filters, the additional filters can have the dashboard filters toggle turned on, meaning they will be effected by other filters on the dashboard. 

On our dashboard we have added a country filter as a sub-filter, we can see that when region 'Europe' is selected, only European countries are visible in the sub-filter, country.

Dates

When using RAPID filters for dates, there are additional advanced designed features available. Within the advanced features, the user can choose from single or multiple calendar (below shows the multiple calendar feature), date format of DD/MM/YYYY or MM/DD/YYY, and selection time or individual date or date range.  

The user also needs to specify in the items panel, whether they would like their data aggregated by year, quarter, month, week, day or time, as this will effect how the filter responds.