Introduction to Selectors

Sample Model: Filter

The Filter component is a selector that lets you take a large amount of data organized in rows and present it in a user-friendly way. At the same time, the Filter component lets a user create models with drill down navigation that can use two or more interrelated combo boxes.  With Xcelsius, you don't need to worry about programming a complex drill-down functionality. Simply link the filter component to the Excel file and let the tool do its work.

How Does it Work?

The Filter component takes a range of data that shares a common number of items and "filters" the content so that there are no duplicated records. Then, depending on the selection, the filter inserts the corresponding row into a predefined target row. This target row can be used as source data for any chart. With this combination of features, you can create dazzling models that are both simple to create and rich in content for the final user.

The following picture shows a typical Excel file with a large amount of data:

Once the Excel file is imported into Xcelsius, the Filter component will make sure that there are no duplicated records and will present the information in a more user-friendly way. The first Filter is the default look before any selection has been made; the second filter shows an example of the drill down functionality.

Example

The following example describes how to use the filter component with the Excel file shown above. The file contains Sales per Sales Representative for a group of products. In addition, the data is organized by New Customers and Existing Customers. The Excel file contains a large amount of data that is not easy to analyze.

1. After you import the Excel file, insert a Filter Component in the Canvas area.
2. Click on the Source Data icon and select ALL rows and columns to be included in the model. The columns to filter by as well as the columns to be inserted need to be included in the selection.





3. Click on the Insert In icon and select an empty row as the target row where the Filter will insert the columns for selected row of data. In this example we are filtering by the first three columns so we are going to select only the columns for Q1, Q2, Q3 and Q4 as part of our Insert In row. The columns that we are filtering by are NOT included in the Insert In selection.






The last step for this basic Filter configuration is to define the number of filters that the model will have. By definition, each Combo Box is a filter. In our example, we will have three filters: Product, Sales Representative, and Account Type. All the other columns contain the data we want displayed in the chart.




4. Add the filter title by clicking on the title icon and enabling titles on the appearance tab. In the Behavior and Appearance tab you will find additional functions to will help you to enhance your models.

Now that the Filter configuration is completed, add the chart.

The final model will look similar to the figure shown below: