Filters, slicers and cross-filtering
The four ways a page gets narrowed, and how they combine.
Filtering happens at several levels, and they stack.
The levels
- Dashboard filters — apply to every page.
- Page filters — apply to one page.
- Visual filters — apply to a single chart.
- Slicers — the reader's own controls, on the canvas.
They combine: a visual filter narrows what the page filter already narrowed.
Cross-filtering
Click a bar, a slice or a point and the rest of the page responds. It is on by default, and it is the main reason a dashboard feels interactive rather than static.
You can control which visuals affect which — a chart meant as context can be excluded from filtering the others. That is worth doing for reference visuals nobody expects to be clickable.
Drill down
On a field hierarchy, double-click to go a level deeper — year to quarter to month, category to subcategory — and back up again.
Drill-through
Send a reader from one page to another carrying the context they clicked on. Click a country, land on a detail page already filtered to that country. Paired with a hidden page, this is how a summary-plus-detail dashboard is built.
Filters in the URL
The current filter state can be carried in the link, so sending somebody "the dashboard" sends them the view you were actually looking at.