How to Add a Filter in Looker Dashboard

Adding a filter to your Looker dashboard transforms it from a static report into an interactive analytical tool. Instead of just viewing data, you and your team can actively explore it, slicing and dicing information to answer specific questions on the fly. This guide will walk you through the entire process, from creating a simple filter to understanding best practices that make your dashboards more powerful and user-friendly.

Why Filters are Essential for Your Dashboards

Before jumping into the "how," it's helpful to understand the "why." Filters are the bridge between your data and your users. They are the primary way people interact with a dashboard to tailor the view to their specific needs. Without them, you’d have to create a dozen different dashboards to show slight variations of the same data — one for each region, one for each product category, one for each marketing campaign, and so on.

Filters solve this by allowing for dynamic exploration. A well-designed filter system empowers your team to:

• Drill Down into Specifics: A marketing manager can filter a campaign performance dashboard by a specific channel (like "Facebook Ads") to see how it's performing without the noise of other channels.
• Compare Segments: A sales leader can use a "Region" filter to switch between North America, Europe, and Asia to compare sales performance across territories.
• Focus on a Time Period: An operations manager can use a date filter to look at activity from "Last 7 Days" or "This Quarter" to spot recent trends.
• Answer Follow-Up Questions: Instead of asking an analyst to pull a new report, a user can answer their own "what if" questions by simply changing a filter.

In short, filters democratize your data, reducing the reliance on a dedicated data team for every small query and enabling faster, more informed decision-making across your entire organization.

Getting Started: Your Pre-Flight Checklist

To add a filter, you'll need two main things:

1. The right permissions: You need to have the ability to edit dashboards in Looker. This is typically assigned to users with "Developer" or an equivalent role that grants edit access. If you see an "Edit dashboard" option, you're good to go.
2. An existing dashboard: You need a dashboard with at least one tile (a chart, graph, table, or other visualization). Filters don't work in a vacuum, they need tiles to control.

With those basics covered, you're ready to start building.

How to Add a Filter in Looker: A Step-by-Step Guide

We'll walk through the process of adding a common filter type: a filter for "Product Category." This will allow users to view performance metrics for specific categories in an e-commerce dashboard.

Step 1: Enter Edit Mode

First, navigate to the dashboard you want to modify. In the top-right corner of the dashboard, you will see a menu of options. Click the "Edit dashboard" button. The dashboard will switch into edit mode, indicated by a blue bar at the top and outlines around your tiles.

Step 2: Add a New Filter

In the top toolbar, you'll find an option labeled "Filters." Click on it, and from the dropdown menu, select "Add Filter." This will open the "Add Filter" configuration window, where all the magic happens.

Step 3: Configure Your Filter Settings

This window has two main tabs: "Settings" and "Tiles To Update." We'll start with the "Settings" tab, which defines what the filter is and how it behaves.

Filter Name and Control Type

• Title: This is the user-facing label for your filter. Make it intuitive. We'll name ours "Product Category."
• Control: This determines how users interact with the filter. You have many options, like "Dropdown Menu," "Buttons," "Checkboxes," and "Advanced." For categories, a Dropdown Menu is a great choice because it's clean and familiar. Checkboxes are better if you want users to be able to select multiple categories at once.
• Type: This tells Looker what kind of data the filter is handling. Since product categories are text, we select String. Other common options are Number for numeric values and Date for time-based filters.

Connecting the Filter to Your Data

Next, you need to tell the filter where to get its list of options. Do you want it to pull from a list of all product categories in your database? You'll specify that here.

• Field to Filter On: Click the "Select" button to choose the LookML field that contains the data you want to filter by. You'll need to select an Explore and then find the specific dimension. For our example, we would navigate to our Orders Explore and select the products.category dimension. Looker will now automatically populate the dropdown with all unique product categories found in that field.

Set a Default Value (Optional)

You can set a default value if you want the dashboard to load with a pre-selected filter. For example, you could set "Electronics" as the default category. This is useful for guiding users to a specific view when they first open the dashboard. You can leave it blank to show data for all categories by default.

Step 4: Connect the Filter to Your Dashboard's Tiles

This is the most critical step. A filter doesn't do anything until you tell it which charts and tables to control. Click on the "Tiles To Update" tab in the "Add Filter" window.

Here, you'll see a list of every tile on your dashboard. For each tile you want the "Product Category" filter to affect, you must map the filter to the appropriate field in that tile's data.

• For a tile named "Sales Over Time," you'd select the products.category field from the dropdown list next to it.
• For another tile named "Top Selling Products," you'd also select products.category.
• You might have a "Total Customers" tile that you don't want to be filtered by product category. Simply leave the field dropdown for that tile set to "None."

This step gives you precise control over your dashboard's behavior. Your "Product Category" filter will now update any tile you've linked it to, while leaving the others untouched.

Step 5: Save and Test Your New Filter

Once you've configured your settings and linked your tiles, click the "Add" button at the bottom of the window to create the filter. Your new filter will appear at the top of your dashboard.

You're not done yet! You're still in edit mode. To make the changes live, click the blue "Save" button in the top toolbar.

Now, interact with your new filter. Click the dropdown menu, select a category like "Apparel," and watch as the connected tiles instantly update to show data only for that category. Test a few different options to ensure everything works as expected.

Advanced Tips and Best Practices

Adding a basic filter is straightforward, but mastering filters will take your dashboards to the next level. Here are some tips to make your filters more effective and user-friendly.

Go Beyond Basic Controls

Don't just stick to dropdowns. Looker offers a range of control types for different situations:

• Buttons / Radio Buttons: Perfect when you have a small number of mutually exclusive options (e.g., "Daily," "Weekly," "Monthly"). They allow for one-click changes.
• Checkboxes: Use these when you want users to be able to select multiple values at once (e.g., filtering for traffic from "Facebook," "Google," and "Direct").
• Sliders: Ideal for filtering on a numeric range, like customer satisfaction scores or deal size.

Create Dependencies with Cascading Filters

In some cases, the available options for one filter should depend on the selection in another. For example, you might have a "Region" filter and a "Country" filter. It wouldn't make sense to show "Japan" as an option in the Country filter if the user has already selected "North America" in the Region filter.

You can create this relationship by making the "Country" filter "listen" to the "Region" filter. In the "Country" filter's settings, use the "Filter to Listen to" option and select your "Region" filter. Now, the Country dropdown will only show countries within the selected region.

Activate Cross-Filtering For More Interactivity

Cross-filtering is a powerful dashboard-level setting that allows users to filter by clicking directly on data points within a tile. For instance, a user could click on a specific state in a map visualization, and all other tiles on the dashboard would automatically filter to show data for just that state.

To enable this, go into "Edit dashboard," click on "Settings," and toggle on the "Cross-filtering" option. This dramatically increases the exploratory potential of your dashboard without needing to add more manual filters.

Best Practices for a Great User Experience

• Logical Ordering: Place your most frequently used filters at the top and group related filters together (e.g., all date-related filters should be in one area).
• Keep it Clean: Don't overwhelm users. If a dashboard has more than 5-7 filters, it might be trying to do too much. Consider splitting it into more focused dashboards.
• Use Intuitive Names: Avoid technical jargon or database field names in your filter titles. Use plain language that anyone can understand, like "Campaign Name" instead of ad_campaigns.name.

Final Thoughts

Adding filters is a fundamental skill for anyone working in Looker. It's the key to building dynamic, self-service dashboards that empower your entire team to find insights locked inside your data. By following the steps outlined here — from basic setup to advanced techniques — you can create more engaging and valuable analytical resources for your company.

Manually creating, configuring, and connecting filters in tools like Looker takes time and a certain level of technical comfort. At Graphed, we’ve designed a different approach. Instead of clicking through menus and mapping fields, you can just tell us what you want in simple English. For example, you can ask, "Build a dashboard showing revenue and ad spend by campaign for the last 30 days," and we instantly generate a complete, interactive dashboard — with all the necessary filters already built and connected for you — so you can get straight to exploring your data without the setup.