Analysis Workspace Filter to Update Totals

[#1]

The filter in Reports and Analysis updates the totals once you type in something on the filter and hit enter. However, in Analysis Workspace this does not get updated. Let's say I have a list of sections on my sight and one of them is called "Training". let's say I have 1,000,000 page views for my whole site and 250,000 for Training. Training would then consist of 25% of the totals overall. If I filtered for Training in Reports and analysis then it will update and say the total is 250,000 page views but if I filter in Analysis Workspace then it still shows the same totals. This is just a very simple use case to convey the idea.

I have found that i can create a segment and place it in Analysis Workspace and it will update the totals but it would be really helpful if I didn't clutter my segments by being able to filter like I can in Reports and Analysis.

Thanks!

MG

[#2]

I've mentioned this to Ben before as well.  On top of making it difficult to get totals, we've also found people get confused by what that number is when we share reports.  

We've had to use similar workarounds -- either using segments or by using the "display only selected rows" feature.  But as you stated, neither are quite ideal.

My suggestion was to either have a toggle of which to show or just show both (it looks like there would be room to put the total on top and filtered below with some sort of "filtered" icon next to it).

[#3]

agreed @MikeT1, Perhaps this will be in their April update

[#4]

Thanks for submitting and commenting @mgraham/@MikeT1. This is definitely an area of interest for us with Analysis Workspace. I can't promise anything in April, but we're definitely talking about the best way to solve this problem in the future. 

[#5]

Also in Ad Hoc!  This has caused big issues in the past where people erroneously grab the overall total when they think they are grabbing the total of the filters.

[#6]

It's good to see this idea getting some attention today; we happen to be talking about this very thing. 

The only thing that is giving us pause here is what to do with "calculated" values like min, max, mean, etc. (currently used in conditional formatting, for example). How would you feel if searching updated the totals, but did *not* update these calculated fields based on the search result? For example, if you filtered out the top value in a query showing revenue, we would still use the revenue number for that value when calculating min/max/mean. Is that OK? 

@mgraham @asalerno @MikeT1

[#7]

@benjamingaines hmm... I hadn't thought about that.  Usually when I search filter results, I end up with multiple by way of a contains, in which case it would be a little odd.  But it totally makes sense if you only have one result.  Could there be a way to automatically notate that the min/max/mean still are based on the grand total when a search filter is applied?

[#8]

I think for the conditional formatting case, that would be fine as you could always manually reset the values.  Thinking about it, if my items are in red, for example, I'd probably still want them to be that way to show their value versus the entire set.  Going back to the manual reset, you could add a new option to the conditional formatting UI:  auto-generated for filtered values.

A member of my team had some general feedback of alerting the user doing the filtering that this would apply. It could be a warning on the search/filter modal every time or maybe a modal warning after the search with a "don't show again" option. In either case, you would only show if conditional formatting detected.

[#9]

Good ideas/questions, @MikeT1 and @asalerno. Generally speaking, it sounds like you would prefer filtered totals even if (hypothetically) we did not update min/max/mean based on the subset of values returned by the filter. 

[#10]

Yes. In my opinion, the updated totals are useful on their own, regardless of the impact to mean/max/min logic. Any notation would be a bonus.

[#11]

Agreed that in general yes I would prefer filters even if hypothetically the min/max/mean were not updated. In a perfect world, it would be great if the UI looked at the filtered data as if it were the new "whole set" and based the min/max, mean on that. I know there are limitations. Also, if I filter the data and my conditional formatting is off, then I could easily sort by each row and do high to low very quickly to find my min and max values, enter those into the conditional formatting min and max ranges, and have my report back to the way I need it. I think the priority is that the totals need to reflect the true value of the filtered data. Since Analysis Workspace is being used by other people than analyst, I think that this is a feature that people use a lot ( at least in my experience) and they are getting incorrect totals, which can mean poor business decisions are being made. In essence, it places the shift back on me to make sure they are not doing this but then that seems counter-intuitive fir the purpose of Analysis Workspace.

Also, whatever you decide to do, I think that it should reflect on other tools (e.g. Reports & Analytics).

My $0.02

Thanks @benjamingaines

MG