Scenario

As an admin or content owner, you want to understand how to use filters to expedite searches and build lists and reports.

Solution

Dynamic filters include the following features:

Add or remove filters

To add a filter, click Add Filter and select a filter from the menu that appears. Available filters vary based on where you are in the application.

To remove a filter, click the remove (minus sign) button.

Filter types

These are some of the filter types in PlusPlus.

Text - use operators in tandem with a search value, such as Contains “engineer”
For more, see How to use text filters in PlusPlus.
Select - give a menu of search values to select from based on the data available, such as filtering by Location
You can enter multiple values in these fields.
Date/time - allow you to search by relative or exact timeframe, such as filtering by a Hire Date in the last 2 weeks
Boolean - allow you to set a filter like Has Directs or Has Mentor Profile to Yes, No, or Either

AND vs. OR

Dynamic filters use AND across filters and OR within a filter. For example, if you add two Group filters and select one group for each filter, the dashboard treats this as an AND search and returns only users that are in both groups. But if instead you only add one Group filter and select multiple values within it, the dashboard treats this as an OR search and returns any user that is in any of the selected groups.

The screenshot above that illustrates filter types would return anyone with a title that contains “engineer” AND who has been hired in the last two weeks AND who is located in Atlanta OR New York City.

Finally, by using segments you can group ANDs and ORs together to perform more complex searches in dashboards. Learn more about segments.

Search by relative or exact timeframes

Date fields allow you to search by relative or exact timeframes.

For example, you could use a Relative date range to build a list of anyone hired to your org in the last two months. To do this, set the Hire Date filter to the Relative date range of From 2 month(s) ago. Relative date ranges are particularly useful in segments that automated rules are based on. They allow you to find data relative to today (the time when a rule execution evaluates the segment), rather than when you wrote or last updated the rule.

You could also set an Exact date range by inputting exact From and Until dates.

Go deeper

Dynamic filter examples

This table gives a few more examples of reports and lists you can build in dashboards by using dynamic filters

Scenario	What to do with dynamic filters	Why it works
You want to build an automated rule that assigns an onboarding track to new hires in your Engineering department.	On the People dashboard, set the Department filter to Is “Engineering” and the Hire Date filter to the Relative date range From 2 weeks(s) ago and Until 2 week(s) from now. Save the filter set as a segment.	The Department filter returns everyone who is in Engineering AND the Relative Hire Date range returns everyone hired within the last 2 weeks of the current date or whose official hire date is within 2 weeks from the current date. This results in a list of all the new engineering hires in the prior and future two weeks. Saving the report as a segment allows you to build an automated rule for assigning the onboarding track.
You want a list of all East Coast managers.	On the People dashboard, set the Title filter to Contains “manager” and select all East Coast locations (New York City and Atlanta, for example) in the Location filter.	The Title filter returns everyone with “manager” anywhere in their job title AND who are located in either New York City OR Atlanta.
You want to build a list of all the mentors who report to three particular managers.	On the People dashboard, Select Mentor from the Role filter. Then, add three Manager filters set to Is and followed by a manager’s name (one per filter). Or, set one Manager filter to Matches and enter all the managers’ names, separated by a vertical bar ( \| ), such as Amanda Castro\|James Synsar\|Aarvul Rhamasa.	The Role filter returns everyone who is marked as a mentor in your instance of PlusPlus AND the Manager filter(s) narrows the list to only the people who report to these three particular managers.

Using text filters

There are 10 operators available in each text filter. You can combine these operators with a search value to be more exact in your search query. Two of the operators (Matches and Does not match) also accept regular expressions for more complex searches.

Get a full explanation of how each operator works and get more info on using regular expressions.

Using segments

Once you have configured dynamic filters on a dashboard, you can save the resulting list or report for future use so that you don’t have to reconfigure the filters again. There is also a Segment filter you can add to a dashboard. This allows you to add a saved segment to another set of filters to create a unique report. Finally, automated rules are use segments saved in dashboards as rule conditions. For more, see How to use dashboard segments.