I am trying to use actions to apply filters to a table below a set of charts. Each chart has a filter by product type, the issue im experiencing is that when I click on a chart it bypasses the product type filter. Here is an example below. You can see that the count on the selected region is 1, but i get many records in the filtered chart below. This seems to be because the action is only applying the filters of the fields (the bucket range = 25-50 and the period = 0) used within the visual without applying the product type filtered field on the visual. Is there a workaround for this? I tried adding the fields to the group by/color section but that doesnt seem to solve the issue…
Hi @asdf1,
If you apply an action filter, it should not bypass another filter that’s already applied, it should work along with it.
I may need some additional information though to assist further..the ‘Count of customers’ that has a count of 1 you’re referring to, it says ‘custom’ so are you applying additional aggregation to this? What are the fields being used in the bar graph, what are the fields being used in the table, what field are you using currently in the action filter and what field did you apply separately to each visual? Just trying to get a better picture of the scenario.
Additional note to add; as you’ve noticed, when using an action filter, you can only filter by fields in your ‘Group By’ section, but you can use a navigation action instead to adjust parameters, which can allow you to filter other visuals by fields that are not being used, like the issue you’re encountering.
For more context. I have 3 charts at the top by product that are all filtered by separate fields. lets call them has_product1, has_product2, and has_product3. These are not mutually exclusive fields.
Each chart has their respective filter applied directly to the visual (ex the first chart is set to has_product1 = 1).
Each chart has three fields in use, the periods_since_activation, sum(has_productx) and the buckets field. In the action I am able to filter on the periods_since_activataion and the buckets field and I apply both to the chart at the bottom. As I mentioned, this bypasses the has_productx field that is applied directly to the visual.
The chart at the bottom is at the customer level and contains some additional dimensional data plus the has_productx fields. I can clearly see that the has_productx fields are not being filtered properly when I click the visual.
The count of customers field is just a count of customer_ids used in the tooltip section only.
Im not sure how to use the parameters as I am somewhat new to this feature, but if I do have to go this route, is there a way to configure it so that the end user does not have to select an additional menu option through a control to apply the filter? I would like it to function as I have above where they click the visual one time and it does all the necessary filtering. Its not clear how this would work with a navigation action. Could you please provide me with the details of how this would be configured?
Thank you for the additional information; yes I believe the only way to achieve this would be through using parameters to filter down.
So in terms of using parameters instead; you’ll have to use parameters for each of the 3 fields you’d like to filter by as it’s an all or nothing approach; you can’t setup an action and a navigation filter based on a click so you’ll need to handle all the same way.
Start by building your parameters based on the 3 fields but do not link them to your dataset for values (you actually don’t even need to create a control…therefore eliminating the option for a user to select/have to select an additional control).
Once those are completed, you’ll want to setup a navigation action instead of a filter action. Keep the ‘Target Sheet’ as your current one and add your 3 new parameters to the ‘Parameter’ section. When you’re setting these up, you’ll want to change the ‘set parameter value’ to ‘Field: {Matching Value}’.
This will essentially set your parameter control (even though it does not exist on the page) to the value that you click on.
Then you can setup a filter on your table based on these parameters.
I’m still a bit confused on a couple of points here. First off, I should clarify that I have since remodeled my data to rely on a single field called product_type to filter each chart by its respective type. I setup a parameter called ProductType for this field and when I created a navigation action, I was given the custom, field: {count of customer}, field: {usage bucket}. It doesnt seem as though these are the options that I want to select from.
Additionally, when I create a filter, would I create it as a product_type filter and add the ProductType parameter to that filter? This would be done on the chart at the bottom?
Hi @asdf1,
Maybe I have this incorrect so please correct me if so but now that you’ve adjusted your top visuals, are they all built from the same 3 fields? If those are your only options in the navigation drop down, then are you only using 2 fields in your bar charts?
Can you show me the field well for your bar charts? They need to be utilizing ‘has product’ in some capacity to filter, otherwise the system would have no way of knowing what value is being selected in the top visuals.
so essentially i want to be able to apply the product_type filter dynamically to the chart at the bottom when i click on a particular chart that is filtered by the product_type already.
Ah, ok. You can’t pass along a filtered value from one visual to another.
I’ll have to think about alternate options for this scenario and how it can be achievable.
Ultimately though, you may have to explore various options to include your product_type field in the visuals so that you can utilize in an action.
@Brett Can we submit this as a feature request? This seems so fundamental. I cant believe it doesn’t already exist. Just a checkbox to apply the filters that exist on the visual as part of the action.
Could I build 3 independently filtered charts overlaid on top of the other and use an action to surface one particular chart when i click on a particular visual at the top?
Hi @asdf1,
I setup a very basic example in Quick Sight Arena to show how you can accomplish this based on using parameters with navigation actions. Actions not apply filters on chart level
Once you open this, click the ‘copy analysis’ button on the left so that you can view the analysis to see how I built.
So I created a parameter called ‘Product’, but did not add a control to the sheet. Then I setup navigation actions for each of the bar charts. This navigation action sets the parameter (the Product one I just created) to the value that I’d like to filter the table by. So in my first bar chart, it’s filtered down to product called ‘Alchemy’. So I setup the navigation action to change the parameter to ‘Custom’ and then put in ‘Alchemy’ as the value. (For this, please note that Quick Sight is case sensitive so make sure you put the value in exactly how it shows up in the dataset).
This way, when I select the first bar chart, it will set the Product parameter to ‘Alchemy’. Then, I create a filter on the table for the field ‘Product’ and have it equal the parameter value. That way, when I select the first visual, it will set the parameter control to ‘Alchemy’, which will then filter the table.
@Brett Thanks for the reply. I have setup the parameter as you suggested, however because I also need to filter on another parameter in my visual this doesnt seem to accomplish what I need since Quicksight seems to “Limit 1 select action per visual”
So I can either filter by the product or the other parameter I had before…
Is there a workaround for this to be able to filter on both fields at the same time?
@Brett After further exploring this solution, its proving to be tedious and insufficient. This could easily be resolved with the feature request I suggested above to apply the filters on the visual itself to the chart the action is connected to. Please let me know if this can be added as a feature in the near future. For now, I will be unable to continue down this path and will have to build out a chart for every individual visual.
