Zoho Analytics: Cascading User Filters

As you get to use a piece of software or application more and more, you tend to discover more and more about its capabilities. A little icon here, a shortcut key there – finding those hidden jewels results in Eureka moments that make you go, “Aha, so it’s done that way!” Sometimes, you may even find Easter eggs, cleverly placed by fun-loving programmers.

Before I digress further, let’s take the case of ‘User Filters’ in Zoho Analytics. While continuing to use the drag-and-drop report designer, one day you might have noticed the third tab and asked yourselves, “How different is this ‘User Filters’ tab from the other ‘Filters’ tab?” and clicked on it. Then, as you first created your user filter, it may have dawned on you about how it works and how useful it is for the viewers of a report.

Till recently, though, there was one little niggle with user filters. Let me explain with an example. Say you are a Manager of a retail store that sells many ‘Products’. And these products fall under a few broad ‘Product Categories’. Now, let’s say you’d set up a user filter for ‘Product Category’ (for the report’s viewers to know how sales have fared in each category), and then you’d put in a second user filter for ‘Product’ (for viewers to further drill down sales based on products).

When a viewer chooses a ‘Product Category’ to view, what will her expectation be with the ‘Product’ user filter? To display products of that particular product category alone, right? Sadly, this wasn’t the case, and Zoho Analytics simply continued to list products of all categories. This has been corrected now with the ‘List only relevant values’ option.

When a value is chosen in the first user filter, it cascades over the subsequent filters, giving the report’s viewers a better user experience.

Hope you liked learning about how the working of user filters has been improved now in Zoho Analytics. If you notice a need for any such improvements when using other features, do let us know in the comments below or write to us at support@zohoreports.com. We’ll do our best to bring them in for you 🙂