Create a basic filter

Filters let you describe the items that will appear in a list and can be used anywhere you see this filter drop-down menu. This could be a task list within a project, a list of issues in an Issues report, or a list of documents in a Document report. Only items that match the filter conditions and that the logged-in user has rights to view will appear in the list. Each filter is based on fields related to the objects in the list. Each row represents an object, a task in this case. Once you know how to create a filter for one object type in Workfront, you’ll be able to create filters for other object types. A filter tells a list report which items you want to see. Filters help you find specific items or narrow your list down to items that meet certain criteria. For example, show all the tasks assigned to my home team that no one has picked up yet. This is a task filter named My Home Team’s Unassigned Tasks. Show all the unassigned tasks in my role. This is a task filter named Unassigned Tasks in my role. Show all the projects I own that are behind schedule. This is a project filter named Late or behind projects I own. Show all projects. This is a project filter named All. This shows all projects that you have permission to see. You have permission to see a project when it is shared with you by someone else. If you create a project, it is automatically shared with you. Let’s group our list by status, then collapse our groupings so we can see how many projects are in each status. Notice that there are projects with five different statuses. Change the filter to Active. Then you see projects that are considered active. You’ll notice that you still see projects in the statuses of Current, Planning and Approved. Why is that the case? By opening the Filter dropdown and clicking on the Edit icon next to the Active filter, you can see that the filter was built to include those three statuses. This project filter has only one rule. Show all projects with a status that equates with Current, Planning or Approved. Let’s look at some other common filters and see how they work. My Projects is a common one. In this filter, you see a user-based wildcard. $user.id is the ID of the logged in user. So whoever is logged in will see their own projects. This field source, Project Users, is a list of all Workfront users assigned to this project whether they have a project owner or someone assigned to only one task. This is referred to as the Project Team. All of the users on the Project Team can be seen in the People section on a project. So this filter is saying, Show all projects where the status equates with Current and where the logged in user is a member of the Project Team. When you see a filter with the word My in it, like My Projects, it usually means it will reference the logged in user. So the filter will yield different results based on who the logged in user is. In other words, who is using the filter. It’s a good practice to use the word My or I in both filter and report names where items are filtered based on the logged in user. This way users know the items they’re looking at in the list are specific to them. The Do this month filter shows another kind of wildcard, a date based wildcard. Do this month means show all projects where the planned completion date is within the current month. The filter is checking to see if the planned completion date is between the two dates. The easiest way to choose these dates is by selecting one of the date qualifier options. The options you choose will be shown using $$today and a date based wildcard. You’ll learn about how to use this to customize date filters in a later video. For now, just choose the qualifier dropdown menu. A filter can have actual dates selected. This can be useful when you need a specific date, but we’ll continue to use that date if you try to use that filter in the future. If you need the filter list to report based on today’s date, a date based wildcard will do the job. Now let’s build a filter from scratch. Someone wants to see all of their completed tasks. What does this mean in Workfront? It means you will create two filter rules in a task list filtered. Tasks that are complete and tasks that are assigned to you. Let’s create a task filter named My Completed Tasks. Just to clarify, although we are in a project, the list we’re looking at is showing task information. So we are looking at a task list filtered. You want to only see completed tasks in this list report, so you’ll add a filter rule to check for tasks that are complete. Enter isComplete equal true. This will show you all tasks that have a status of complete or that have a custom status that equates with complete. At this point we have narrowed down the list to completed tasks, but we still need to add another rule because we’re looking at all completed tasks and not just those that you, the logged in user, have completed. The second rule can be added like this. Assignment users id equal $user.id. This will show you tasks assigned to you, even if there is more than one user assigned to the task. When there are two or more rules in a filter, each rule has to be true in order for an item to pass through the filter and to show in the list report. The filter we just built indicates that you want to see all tasks that are both completed and assigned to you. This is known as an AND filter. You can also create OR filters. You’ll learn about those in a later video. With the filter built, we can see that the logged in user is showing as at least one of the users assigned to each task in the report and that each of these tasks is complete. You can share filters with other Workfront users the same way you share views, groupings and other items in Workfront. Just select the Share option from the Filter menu and enter the names of those you want to share the filter with. To remove a filter, select Remove from the Filter menu.