Dashboard filters

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Temporary filters

1. Open your dashboard.
2. Click Add filter, then specify the field to filter on and the value to filter by.

3. To adjust which tiles the filter applies to, open the Tiles tab.

4. Your filters appear at the top of the dashboard.

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Saved filters

1. Open your dashboard.
2. Make sure you’re in edit mode — if you’re not, you’ll see the Edit dashboard button.

3. Click Add filter, then specify the dimension or metric to filter on.

4. Leave the value blank, or specify one.

5. To adjust which tiles the filter applies to, open the Tiles tab.

6. Click Apply, and the filter appears at the top of your dashboard.

7. Once you have all the filters you want, hit Save.

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Filtering charts created in the SQL runner

1. Choose a column from the list of all columns available across all charts.
2. Choose a filter label to give the filter a recognizable name.
3. Choose the filter operator and values as you would for any other filter.

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How dashboard filters interact with chart filters

• Explore from here on a dashboard tile keeps the filters you saw on the dashboard. Filters overridden in the dashboard stay overridden; filters the dashboard didn’t touch are the same as in the original chart.
• Edit on the chart instead shows the original chart filters.

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Required filters and filter requirement groups

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Marking a single filter as required

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Combining filters into a requirement group

1. Click Add another rule, pick Order status, then add Order date to the same rule. One filter makes a plain required filter; more make an “at least one of” group. Filters with a default value, or already in another rule, can’t be picked.
2. Optionally, write a Note for viewers explaining why the filters are required. Ours says: “Pick a payment method, plus an order status or date range, to keep this dashboard fast.”
3. Click Save in the popover, then save the dashboard.

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What viewers see

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Required filters in dashboards-as-code

config:
  requiredFiltersNote: "Pick a payment method, plus an order status or date range, to keep this dashboard fast."
filters:
  dimensions:
    - id: payment-method-filter
      label: Payment method
      required: true
      # ...
    - id: order-status-filter
      label: Order status
      requiredGroupId: status-or-date
      # ...
    - id: order-date-filter
      label: Order date
      requiredGroupId: status-or-date
      # ...

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Empty default dashboard filters

• They render in the filter bar as is any value.
• They do not override chart-level filters on the same field. If a saved chart is filtered to country is India and the dashboard has an empty country filter, tiles keep the India filter until a viewer picks a value in the dashboard. As soon as a viewer selects a value, normal dashboard-overrides-chart behavior resumes.
• They survive lightdash upload and are not flagged by lightdash lint — an empty active filter in dashboard YAML is a valid configuration.

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Sharing a dashboard with filter overrides

• When adding a temporary filter in view mode, you can change the filter’s values — field, value, operator, and which tiles it applies to — but not the filter type, so a temporary filter can’t become a saved filter.
• When overriding a saved filter in view mode, you can only change the value and operator; the field and tile configuration stay as they are.
• In edit mode, when you change a saved filter to override its default value, the ‘override’ status is removed once you click Apply.

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Seeing which tiles have filters applied

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Filter value autocomplete

- name: customers
---
- name: orders
  meta:
    joins:
      - join: customers
        sql_on: ${customers.customer_id} = ${orders.customer_id}
---
- name: payments
  meta:
    joins:
      - join: orders
        sql_on: ${orders.order_id} = ${payments.order_id}
      - join: customers
        sql_on: ${customers.customer_id} = ${orders.customer_id}

- name: customers
---
- name: orders
  config:
    meta:
      joins:
        - join: customers
          sql_on: ${customers.customer_id} = ${orders.customer_id}
---
- name: payments
  config:
    meta:
      joins:
        - join: orders
          sql_on: ${orders.order_id} = ${payments.order_id}
        - join: customers
          sql_on: ${customers.customer_id} = ${orders.customer_id}

# customers.yml
type: model
name: customers
---
# orders.yml
type: model
name: orders

joins:
  - join: customers
    sql_on: ${customers.customer_id} = ${orders.customer_id}
---
# payments.yml
type: model
name: payments

joins:
  - join: orders
    sql_on: ${orders.order_id} = ${payments.order_id}
  - join: customers
    sql_on: ${customers.customer_id} = ${orders.customer_id}

• Filtering on a field from the payments model considers filters applied to fields from the payments, orders, and customers models.
• Filtering on a field from the orders model considers filters applied to fields from the orders and customers models.
• Filtering on a field from the customers model considers filters applied to fields from the customers model.

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Filtering a dashboard from the URL

1. Open the dashboard you want to filter dynamically.
2. Add a value to the filter you want to drive from the URL.
3. Copy the URL shown after applying the filter. It looks like this:

4. Replace the filter value you chose in step 2 with ${ value.formatted | url_encode } to make it dynamic. In the example, the value is Plant+Paradise (highlighted in the image).
5. Paste that URL into the YAML file for the model you’re working in. See an example in our demo project.