Tableau Filters — Operation orders and examples
There are 6 types of tableau filters. Understanding operational order of filters can of vital importance. This article is going to briefly explain the 6 types of filters and share 3 examples to differentiate the subtle details of different filters.
Extract Filters and Data Source Filters applied on extract or live data source. Context Filter, which is a special category filter that serves as Context, i.e. a filter applied before other filters on worksheets.
Dimension Filters, Measure Filters and Table Calculation filter is pretty self explanatory.
Besides these factors, sets, conditional filters etc. falls in between.
The top 5 filters will filter out the underlying data, while the table calculation data will not filter out the underlying data.
When multiple non table filters are applied, the intersection of all filters is selected. Rearrange the order of filters will not change the results. To change filters, you need to take filters out then bring them in again.
Examples
- Goal: figure out top 3 states of west region: Context Filter, Top N , Set, Table Calculation
Among all regions, the top 3 states in term of sales are California, New York and Texas.
Option 1: filter on region (dimension filter) then apply top N by sum of sales.
This operation does not generate the expected result. The reason is because of Top N filter’s operation order is higher than the dimension filter(State). First, tableau filter out the top 3 state: California, New York, Texas. Then it filtered only the west region. At the end, only California was left.
Option 2 : apply region filter as Context Filter, then select Top 3
