Overview

Global filters in dashboards let any dashboard viewer narrow what every widget on a dashboard shows — without editing widgets one at a time. Instead of building the same "Department: Engineering" filter into ten separate widgets, you set it once at the dashboard level and every relevant widget respects it. This is also a way for dashboard viewers, who don't usually have access to editing dashboards, filter the dashboard to focus on the data that matters to them. 

In this article

• How do global filters work in dashboards?
• Adding a global filter
• What viewers see
• How filters and widgets connect
• Reordering filters
• Q&A

How do global filters work in dashboards?

Once created, global filters apply automatically to every widget whose data source matches. 

• You do not need to apply any configurations at the widget level for the global filter to affect the widget.
• You cannot exclude the global filter from affecting a specific widget of the corresponding type.
• You cannot create a single filter that affects widgets of multiple data sources at once. If you need to affect widgets of different data source, create a global filter for each data source.
   

Adding a global filter

Global filters live at the top of the dashboard and affect every widget built on a matching data source.

1. Open the dashboard and click Edit dashboard.
2. Click the Global filters button in the header to open the Filters drawer.
3. Make sure the Global tab is selected and click + Add global filter.
   
4. In the new filter card:
   • Data type — pick the data source the filter should draw values from (Users, Applications, Contracts, Transactions, and so on). This determines which widgets the filter will affect.
   • Field — pick the field on that data source on which you want to filter the widget of the corresponding type (e.g. Department, Owner, Status).
   • Name (optional) — a display label shown to viewers. If you leave it blank, the field name is used.
5. Click Save changes to publish the filter to viewers.

Every widget on the dashboard that uses the same data source and includes the picked field will start filtering by whatever the viewer selects at the top. You can add as many global filters as you'd like to a dashboard. 

Once you add global filters, they will all appear inside the dashboard, inside a dedicated card which you can minimize or expand as needed.

What viewers see

At the top of every dashboard with filters, viewers see a Global filters section. It is:

• Open by default so the controls are visible immediately.
• Collapsible — click the chevron in the top-right to hide the section; the header collapses to "Global filters (N)" where N is the number of filters defined.

Once set, global filters will appear for any dashboard viewer, whether they have dashboard editing scopes or not. Each viewer's filter selections only affect their dashboard experience, similar to personal views in supported Torii tables. The filter value is persistent in the current session, but will not be saved sessions (refreshing the page will remove them). 

How filters and widgets connect

Torii makes the relationship between filters and widgets visible in two directions:

• On each filter card (edit mode) a counter shows the number of widgets that filter currently affects.
• On each widget a small filter icon in the top-right shows the number of filters affecting it on hover).

Hover over either one and Torii highlights the matching set on the other side — hovering the counter on a filter highlights its widgets; hovering the icon on a widget highlights the filters. This makes it easy to sanity-check what a filter change will do before you publish it. You can also hover on a specific widget in the dedicated card to highlight the affected widgets.

Inside a widget's Filter by panel:

• Global filters that match this widget's data source appear as locked, greyed-out rows at the top. They are already being applied — you can see them but can't remove them.

Reordering filters

Drag the handle on the left side of any filter card to change the order filters appear in the bar. The order in the drawer matches the order viewers see at the top of the dashboard.

Q&A

Q: Do global filters replace the per-widget Filter by?

A: No — they add to it. A widget's own Filter by still runs; a matching global filter simply narrows the data further. When both exist, the widget shows rows that pass both conditions.

Q: What happens to my saved widget filters if I add a global filter that overlaps?

A: Nothing is overwritten. The global filter shows up inside the widget's Filter by as a locked, greyed-out row at the top; your original per-widget filters continue to apply.

Q: Can I filter by a field the widget itself doesn't group by?

A: Yes. Global filters run against the underlying data source, not the widget's group-by axis. A widget grouping Applications by Category can still be filtered by Owner if Owner is a field on Applications.

Q: How do I remove a global filter?

A: Open the Filters drawer in edit mode, click the trash icon on the filter card, confirm, and Save changes.