Filter context: ignoring filters on purpose
How to widen a measure past the chart it sits in — the basis of every "share of total" calculation.
By default a measure sees exactly what its chart shows: the grouping, the page filters, the slicers, any cross-filter from another visual. That combination is its filter context.
Most of the time that is what you want. Sometimes you need a measure to look wider.
The problem it solves
"What share of total revenue is this country?"
The numerator has to be this country's revenue. The denominator has to be everyone's — but the
chart is already grouped by country, so a plain SUM returns this country's revenue in both
places, and every row reads 100%.
You need a denominator that deliberately ignores the grouping.
Ignoring filters
The Ignore filters block does exactly that. It reads as:
Ignoring filters on orders
Everything inside it is evaluated as though those filters, and the chart's grouping, were not applied.
Ignoring all but one thing
The more useful variant keeps part of the context:
Ignoring filters on orders except category
Now the denominator is the total within each category, so instead of a share of the grand total you get a share of parent — this product's share of its own category. Changing which field is kept changes what the percentage means, which is the whole expressiveness of the feature.
What "grouping is filter context too" means
The subtlety worth internalising: a chart's grouping is part of its filter context, not something separate. That is why ignoring filters on a table also removes the grouping on that table — and why keeping one field brings the grouping back for that field alone.
Where it does not apply
Filter context cannot be used inside subtotals or on windowed charts, and those combinations are refused with a clear message rather than returning a plausible wrong number. That refusal is deliberate: a silently incorrect percentage is much more expensive than an error.