OBI Answers: Create a ‘Saved Filter’
After Adding a Filter perform the following steps to create a Saved Filter:
Step 1
Click on the ‘Save Filter’ button
Step 2
The ‘Save Filter’ popup will appear.
Step 3
At this point you have the option to either,
- Save the filter in an exisiting folder, or,
- Save the filter in a new folder
For this example we will save the filter in the ‘SH’ folder. Click the ‘SH’ folder under ‘Shared Filters’.
The following should appear in the Folder field near the bottom of the popup.
Step 4
Fill in the Name field and the optional Description field. e.g.
Name: ‘Gross Profit Greater than $250000′
Description: ”Only display records when the gross profit exceeds $250,000.’
The screen should now look like this.
Step 5
Click OK button. The filter will be saved and will now appear in the left-hand selection pane under filters.
Thank you. Can you edit a saved filter without creating a new one? Let’s say we want ot increase the number from 250,000 to 300,000.
Sometimes users may have multiple columns and multiple values in the saved filter and they just want to make modifiactions.
I am still searching the web and if I find something. I will answer my own question.
Thank you,
Greg
Hi Greg,
Yes you can.
Click on the ‘Answers’ menu option. This should display the ‘Catalog’ and ‘Dashboards’ tabs on the left-hand panel. On the Catalog tab there should be some ‘Filters’ folders. Go to the folder your saved filter is in and locate your saved filter.
In my example ‘Gross Profit Greater than $250000′ is in the ‘Shared Filters’ folder.
Click on the filter and click on the ‘Filter Options’ icon. Edit the filter and save it.
As a side note, you may wish to design your filters in a way that they are not changed. The reason being, you could think of your saved filters as ‘constants’ that are used consistently throughout all the reports. If you have to keep changing them then maybe they shouldn’t be saved filters?
For example, you may need to display the previous quarter results for a particular department. This will need to be reported on every quarter and a variety of reports need to be written that return this data. This is a good candidate for a saved filter, i.e. it never changes.
However, if part of the filter regularly changes think about using only part of the filter conditions and saving those as a saved filter. The changeable conditions can then be added as additions by different users for different reports.