Create OR statements in filters
The video explains how to create and use filters with multiple rules in Workfront. By default, Workfront uses “AND” between filter rules, meaning all conditions must be true for an item to appear in the list.
Alternatively, you can change the filter logic to “OR,” which displays items that meet any of the conditions.
The video also demonstrates creating filters for tasks using filter groups. For example, you can create two groups: one for incomplete tasks assigned to the creative team that are late, and another for incomplete tasks assigned to the creative team that are unassigned. Within each group, “AND” logic applies, meaning all conditions in the group must be met. The “OR” logic between groups ensures tasks meeting the conditions of either group are displayed.
When you create a filter with multiple rules, Workfront puts the word AND between each rule, like this.
With this filter applied, you will only see projects in your list where the project is in the events marketing portfolio, AND the project has a planned completion date in this month, AND the project has a status of current.
With AND, all of these filter rules must be true for a project to appear on your list. When we run the report, we see that all the projects listed are in the events marketing portfolio, AND have a planned completion date this month, AND have a status of current.
Let’s look at that filter again. AND is the default, but you can change it to OR if you want. With OR, if any of these rules are true, you will see the project in your list. So now you will see all projects planned to be completed this month, as well as all the projects in the events marketing portfolio, as well as every project with a status of current. There are 94 projects in this case. That may not be what you want.
A more common use for OR filters would be, show me all incomplete tasks assigned to the creative team that are either late or unassigned. All these tasks are assigned to the creative team and they are all incomplete. Some of them are late and assigned to a user, and others are on time and not assigned to a user. One is both late and unassigned.
To create this filter in the task report, you need to have two filter groups.
The first group is show me all incomplete tasks assigned to the creative team that are late. And the second group is show me all incomplete tasks assigned to the creative team that are unassigned.
When creating an OR filter this way, Workroom puts the AND filters into groups like this to make it easy to read and to separate it from other groups where you use OR. This means that you want to see tasks that meet the conditions of either of these groups. Within each group, the task must meet all of the conditions since they have ANDs between them.
OR filter activity
You want to find incomplete tasks that are assigned to you or that aren’t assigned to anyone. You set up a filter to look like the one below. Will this filter give you the results you want? Why or why not?
Answers
No, this filter will not provide the results you’re hoping for—tasks that aren’t finished that are either assigned to you or assigned to no one—because the filter rule for the task completeness is only on one side of the OR.
Instead, this filter will generate a list that shows:
- Tasks assigned to you that are not complete.
- PLUS (OR)
- All unassigned tasks, no matter what the status is.
The filter should look like the one below. Notice this filter has the filter rule for task completeness on both sides of the OR.
