How to Add Filters to Tableau Dashboards

Recently, I created a sales Dashboard in Tableau to display the charts showing overall sales, profit, and categories. Later, I customized the dashboard and added filters so that users can filter and view the specific data in the worksheets directly in the dashboard.

By adding filters in Tableau dashboards, we can avoid the need to create different dashboards for different views.

In this Tableau tutorial, I will explain how to add filters to Tableau dashboards for different business requirements.

Table of Contents

Filter in Tableau Dashboards

In Tableau dashboards, filters enable us to restrict or limit the data shown in a chart or across an entire dashboard to a specific selection of values, ranges, or conditions.

In dashboards, filters can be applied directly to views or through “Filter Actions” that allow users to select a data point in one visualization and view a related, filtered version in the selected chart or across all charts in the dashboard.

Add Filters in Tableau Dashboards

In Tableau dashboards, there are three ways to display filtered data on the worksheets within the dashboard.

Add a quick filter to the Tableau dashboard
Add filters to the worksheet in the Tableau dashboard
Add filters to multiple worksheets in a Tableau dashboard

Add a Quick Filter to the Tableau Dashboard

In the Tableau dashboard, the quick filters are displayed when a filter has already been added to a worksheet before the worksheet is added to the dashboard.

Using this method, you can adjust the worksheet filters directly on the dashboard. Now, follow the steps below to add a quick filter to the Tableau dashboard.

To add a quick filter, open the dashboard and click on the drop-down of the worksheet to which you want to add a filter. In this example, I’m adding a filter to the Line chart for the fields ‘Profit‘ and ‘Segment‘.

In the dropdown, select “Filters,” and it will display the filters already added to the worksheet chart. In this example, I have selected the filters Sum of Profit and Sum of Sales.

Now the selected filters will be visible on the top right corner of the dashboard. From here, we can adjust the filters and display the data accordingly in the Dashboard.

For example, if I uncheck any value from the segment filter, then data for the same unchecked value will also be removed from the worksheet in the dashboard.

We can also customize the added worksheet filter. For example, I want to display only the sales where profit is greater than 15k.

To edit a filter, click on the filter dropdown and select Edit Filter. In the Edit window, select Condition -> By Field -> add condition Profit Sum > 15000.

Adjust quick filter in Tableau dashboard

Now, in the dashboard worksheet, we will see that the data is displayed according to the filter condition we have added.

This way, we can add a quick filter to the Tableau dashboard, which allows us to restrict data or apply conditional visibility to a specific worksheet within the dashboard.

Add a Filter to the Worksheet in the Tableau Dashboard

In this approach, we will apply filters directly to the worksheet so that it reflects the same filtered data in the dashboard. In this example, I will add filters to a map chart that is already added to a dashboard.

Open the worksheet that is already added to the dashboard and follow the steps below.

In this map chart, I will apply the filter that will show the sales only for the top 10 states. To add this filter, drag the states to the Filters section.

In the Filter select Top -> By field -> Top 10 -> Sales(Sum)-> click OK.

Now the map chart will only highlight the states with the top sales. The same filter will reflect on the Dashboards, where the worksheet is added.

Add filter to Tableau Dashboard Worksheets

With this, we can view this filter on the dashboard through the quick filter, but we cannot override the filter from the worksheet.

Apply filters in Tableau Dashboard Worksheet

This way, we can apply the filters in the Tableau worksheet and display the worksheet with that filtered data in the dashboard.

Add Filters to Multiple Worksheets in a Tableau Dashboard

In Tableau dashboards, we can also apply filters in a way that a single filter reflects changes across all worksheets in the dashboards.

By default, a filter added to a dashboard only applies to its source worksheet. To add a filter to multiple worksheets, we need to change the filter scope.

Add a quick filter to any worksheet in the dashboard. For example, I have added a filter to the map chart to remove states. We can also apply this filter directly from a worksheet, like the previous method.

Apply filter to multiple charts in Tableau Dashboard

On the dashboard, click the dropdown arrow on the filter you just added.

Add Filter to multiple worksheets in Tableau

In the dropdown, select Apply to Worksheets, then choose one of the following options:

All Using This Data Source: Applies the filter to the worksheets or charts in the dashboard if they are using the same dataset.

Selected Worksheets: It opens a dialog box where you can choose the worksheets manually. This is useful if you don’t want to apply the same filter to other worksheets in the dashboard.

Apply one filter to all charts in Tableau Dashboard

Now, according to the selected option, the filter will reflect changes in other worksheets. For example, if I add or remove states from the map chart, it will also remove the data for those states from other charts in the dashboard.

Apply filter to multiple worksheets in Tableau

This way, we can add filters to multiple worksheets in the Tableau Dashboard.

Conclusion

In this Tableau tutorial, we have learned different ways to add and manage filters in Tableau dashboards. In the above examples, we have discussed how to use quick filters to interact with individual charts.

Then, we used worksheet filters to control the data before it was displayed in the dashboard, and finally, we added a dashboard filter that could be applied across multiple worksheets in the dashboard.