Simplified Cascading for Multiple Choice Drop-Down Filters

FilterZen, the ultimate Filter Web Part for SharePoint, has had cascading drop-down filters for a while but we have now extended our offering.

What are drop-down filters?

FilterZen lets you combine filters of various types to then target a variety of data presentation and other Web Parts. Among simpler filter types such as text filters (providing a simple text box) or date pickers, we also offer a range of drop-down filters: these are Choice Filters (you pre-define the pickable choices), SQL Data Filters (choices are loaded from any ADO-compatible data source), BDC Lookup Filters (choices are loaded from any BDC application), User Filters (choices are simply a pre-defined selection of existing user accounts) and List Lookup Filters (choices are loaded from any SharePoint List inside the farm).

What is meant by "Cascading" them?

Since 2009, once a FilterZen Web Part had at least two drop-down filters and was connected to a CAML-capable consumer Web Part, such as List Views, BDC Lists or List-bound Data Views, you could tick (in the Interactive Filters section) a check-box option labeled:

Cascading pre-filtering: limit pickable choices of all drop-down filters to existing values still available after filtering.

This simply means that any end-user selection in any of your drop-down filters immediately reduced in all other drop-down filters the total set of possible selections to a sub-set that would "still make sense" given the initial end-user selection. In other words, once a value foo is selected in Filter A, if there are no List items containing both foo and bar, then bar would no longer be available for selection in Filter B.

So you can "Cascade based on the connected List". Now what's new?

Simple. Cascading based on List data covers maybe 90% of use cases, but sometimes this is not what's required at all. One user for instance connected a Filter Web Part to an Excel Web Access (EWA) Web Part and wanted to provide end-users with a bi-level filter selection (somewhat akin to a simplified faceted metadata navigation) resembling the following:

In an upcoming release, we will simply let you define such ontological hierarchies via SharePoint 2010's new built-in Managed Metadata & Taxonomy Management features and then let you reflect these in your filters. For now, this was to work on SharePoint 2007 and the semantics of little complexity, it had to be definable right inside FilterZen without too much hassle. So for now we came up with a new simply syntax that lets you connect two Choice Filters (or rather, any drop-down filter and a Choice filter) to provide cascading behavior outside any sort of List context. The following screenshot below demonstrates just how easily you can achieve the inter-dependent filter value selection sets shown in the above screenshot:

Comments

[Srini]

I have used two Choice filters to filter my list and performed the steps as mentined above. But after selecting the filter values, no items are shown in my list. If I use lookup filters for the same, I am able to filter my list. What configuration I missed here.

[ROXORITY]

Sorry for the delay! If this is still an issue, please email us an export of your FilterZen Web Part (via its web part menu / Export option).