Filtering

In this article

• Overview
• Access the Filter Panel
• Setup
• Working with Groups

Filter Panel Overview

The Filter Panel allows you to create filters in your workspace to create a data view showing only certain records based on particular conditions that you determine.  For example, you may have a dropdown with High School, College, and Graduate School, but may wish to only view data submitted by High School students.  You can set a filter such that only responses to that question where the choice  'High School' was selected will be shown. 

Filters have varying levels of complexity - they can combine several fields, they can include some or all of the conditions you create, can filter for records based on fields on linked forms, and can involve conditions such as "is/isn't," "contains/does not contain," or "greater than/less than."  It is recommended you plan out which data you would like to see - and which conditions would target that data - before you begin setting up filters in Zengine.

Access the Filter Panel

The Filter Panel exists in a number of functions throughout Zengine, including:

• Data Views
• Bulk Actions
• Bulk Email
• Setting up Submission Groups for Automatic Review Assignments
• Conditional Field Rules
• Summary Fields
• Setting Custom Permissions
• Reporting Dashboard Widgets

The filter tool performs slightly different purposes depending on the context of the tool in which it appears: for example, using the Filter Panel on the Data View will limit the records being shown to only those that match the conditions, while filtering with Bulk Actions will limit the records that will be edited or deleted to those that match the conditions which are set.

You will know if the feature you are utilizing has a filter panel if you see this icon: 

Select that icon to bring up the Filter Panel:

Setup

At this point, you can begin setting up a filter.

Note: The fields present in the Filter Panel can vary based on the feature or plugin that you are utilizing. Access the article particular to that feature (see above) if you want to learn about the fields unique to that feature.

The Filter Panel contains a few different features:

	Field	Description
A	All/Any	The All/Any button will display the currently selected option. By selecting All, it means all of the criteria have to be met in order for data to be included for this filter. By changing this to Any, if you have multiple criteria, just one has to be met in order for the data to show - that is, a record will be included in the filter if it meets any of the defined conditions, instead of all of them. When All is selected, the word displayed to the left of each condition will be And, indicating that all conditions must be met. When Any is selected, the word to the left will display Or, indicating any of the conditions can be met.
B	Field	Here is a dropdown of available filterable fields from the form(s) in question. Choose one of the fields to begin setting up the condition.
C	Condition	Depending on the field type selected, you will see a set of possible conditions for your filter, such as "contains," "greater than," or "starts with."  See more about Conditions below.
D	Value	For field types with preset values (dropdowns, checkboxes, radio buttons, etc), you can choose which value(s) the filter will be based on. For open-ended fields (text fields, number fields, etc), you can write in a particular value that you would like the filter to be based on.
E	Add a Filter	Select this blue button to add a new filter condition. Depending on whether All or Any is selected in the upper left corner of the filter panel, this will add a condition that either must be met by a record or may be met.

 

Conditions

There are a number of possible conditions you can choose from, which must be met by data in order to be included in the filter you are creating.

Condition	Description
is / isn't	Here, the data would have to exactly meet the Value. If you are entering the data yourself, you will want to be careful regarding upper v. lowercase, punctuation, spaces, etc. Just adding one space to the Value will impact which data is filtered out. For example, if you want to see only data where the Value is "NY," and someone entered "N.Y." that would not show up in your filtered results.
contains / does not contain	This could be utilized for longer responses to ensure that the word or phrase in question appears somewhere in the response. If there is a textbox where you want to see results only where users entered the phrase "engineering," you could enter this in the Value. Conversely, you can filter to show only results that do not contain a particular word or phrase.
starts with / ends with	While for "contains / does not contain," the word or phrase would have to appear somewhere in the field, this Condition is set such that the word or phrase has to be at the beginning or end of a response. For example, perhaps there are a number of possible Business Majors: Business Intelligence, Business Management, etc. Instead of setting several filters for Business Management and Business Intelligence, you can set the filter to show all responses that start with "business."
is any of / is not any of	These two conditions can be used to filter checkboxes, dropdowns, and radio buttons to match any one of or not one of the selected values. [Learn More]
exists / does not exist	Here, you can set whether data simply exists or does not exist in the field. The Value field will become read only if this selected.
on or after / on or before	If you select a Date Field, you can show data that occurred on or after a particular date, or on or before before a particular date.
greater than or equal to / less than or equal to	If you select a Number Field, you can show data that is greater than/equal to a particular field, or less than/equal o a particular value.

In the example below, we have set up a filter such that we only see project submissions to the category " Combat Underage Drinking" that have been submitted since 1/1/2017.

You can add as many filters as you wish and can utilize the "x" icon next to that filter in order to remove it.

Click the blue "Save" button when you are ready.

Working with Groups

You can add as many filters and combinations as you wish to utilize the "All/Any" feature.  Remember, by selecting "All," it means all of the criteria have to be met in order for data to show for this filter. By changing this to "Any," if you have multiple criteria, just one has to be met in order for the data to show.

However, sometimes your filter may be more complex. You may wish ALL of one criterion to be met, but ANY of another criterion.  In order to accomplish this, you would create a group.

In the following example, we want to look at awards only from the year 2015 but would like to have a subgroup of those awards that are EITHER greater than $5000 OR less than $10,000.

The The Awarded Amount sub-filter here is called a group.

In order to add a group, you would click the blue +Add a Filter button.  Instead of selecting a field from the dropdown, you will see the top Group with All and Any as options.

Selecting one of those options from the dropdown will create a group of filter conditions, all of which will be structured by the All or Any options, and allow you to have even further flexibility with your filter.

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