Friday, February 26, 2010 at 1:12 | 10 Comments SharePoint Value Range Filtering: the New, Simplified Way
Cascading, Multiple-Value List Filters, FilterZen, MOSS 2007, SharePoint 2010, Value-Range / Date-Span Filtering, WSS 3.0, Web Part Connections, Web Parts, Wildcard List Search with CAML operators One reason for FilterZen's popularity is its range-filtering capabilities.
Think about the out-of-box filtering and search capabilities of SharePoint: drilling down into a specific sub-range, whether in date-time terms ("show me data between March and August") or in numeric terms ("show me sales between 100 and 500"), if you don't want to Modify your List View everytime you want to see certain data sub-ranges, then neither the built-in Advanced Search nor the built-in Column header drop-down filter menus will take you there.
FilterZen made this possible, but until today this involved a number of redundant manual set-up steps. The more steps there are, or the more repetetive those are, the more there is scope for mistakes and omissions. As we saw how popular range filters are, we decided to save you even more hassle and time and further streamline the process for you.
As we described before, up until now the steps for adding a range filter were:
- Enable the CAML filtering mode option in the Advanced Filtering Settings section.
- Set up one filter representing the lower bounding value and set its operator to greater-than (or greater-than-or-equals).
- Set up a second filter representing the upper bounding value, with the same name and settings but a different operator (less-than, or less-than-or-equals).
- Enter the same filter name under AND-combined filters in the Advanced Filtering Settings section.
From now on, you can save the last two steps and reduce your effort by 50%:
- Enable the CAML filtering mode option in the Advanced Filtering Settings section.
- Set up only a single filter, now representing both bounding values, by setting its operator to one of the new, special range operators shown in the screenshot on the right.
The results are as good as they were before, but setting this up just got a great deal easier.
Important! These new range operators are currently available for Choice Filters, Text Filters and Date Filters.
We'll be happy to extend our other filter types with those new range operators, such as the SQL Lookup Filters, the BDC Lookup Filters, List Lookup Filters, User Filters, Page Column Filters, URL Parameter / Page Request Filters and the new SharePoint Context Filters — simply let us know, so that we can prioritize our efforts in the most customer-focused way.
Reader Comments (10)
Hi, I check the value range filter, and like to ask if it's possible to add some description such as "From [___] to [____}" for better UI? thx!
Good suggestion, we'll add this to the roadmap for release 4.0!
Actually we moved this into 3.8.0.23 now available for download. So this is now available, you can specifiy the 2nd label right underneath the main label.
I am having an issue with this new functionality. Basically it works great when the day selected has the same number of digits in both filters. For example, a search for 4/1/2011 -> 4/9/2011 works, as does 4/10/2011 -> 4/30/2011. But 4/1/2011 -> 4/30/2011 or 4/1/2011 -> 4/10/2011 returns no results. Let me know if you have any thoughts.
Thanks!
What version are you using? We use this feature ourselves in a couple of places without issues. Also is this EN-US or some other server or Site locale at your end?
I want to use this for a hire date range showing the new hires within the last 30 days but the filter does not seem to accept
>= today and >today - 30. Any help?
For the "last 30 days" you'd need "> today-30 and <= today" whereas you have >= today.
Also make sure the -30 is not entered in the same text box where "Today" is entered, there is a special "add days" field below where to enter -30 but I suppose you're already doing it this way. Just saying.
Hi, I too have tried to implement a data range -30 for new hires within the last 30 days, but the new technique is not working. I had this setup initially using the first technique and it was working fine, but since we upgraded our version. Do I need to delete the filter web part and re-add the webpart to the page after an upgrade?
Hi, one other thing to note...when using the word "Today" and trying to do a live preview, it comes up with an error that says "You must specify a valid date range..."
Does this have anything to do with why the filtering by last 30 days is not working anymore?
"Do I need to delete the filter web part and re-add the webpart to the page after an upgrade?" -- no.
The new technique works very well typically, but if in your case it doesnt yet the old one DID -- simply revert to that.