How to Use the Board Filter?

In this article:

1. Introduction to the Board Filter
2. How to Use the Board Filter?
    2.1. How to remove the filter?
    2.2. Advanced filtering options

    2.3. How to customize the Advanced filtering options

1. Introduction to the Board Filter

One of the most common use case scenarios in your daily work is locating and tracking different tasks. Having more cards on your board will lead to spending more time going through tasks until you find the right ones. We believe that even with many tasks, columns, and swimlanes, you should be able to navigate and locate the required information with the same speed as if there were only a few cards. This is where the Board filter comes in.

The "Board filter” is located in the sidebar menu and can be accessed from every board. You can use it to filter your board view easily and change your criteria on the go so you can filter out the information you are looking for.

Important: The filter is applied only over the viewable area of your board. Tasks in collapsed columns and swimlanes are ignored. When you expand a column or a swimlane, the filter will be applied over the tasks located there.

If you have a single card that matches the board filter settings and this card is located in a collapsed column/lane/workflow, the location where the card is located will be expanded, and the card will be focused on your screen.

2. How to Use the Board Filter?

The board filter works per board. You can use it to quickly find a card on the current board that matches certain criteria. 

The advanced filter panel allows you to select/specify criteria for cards to be displayed on the board using any of the buttons. However, on the top of the panel, you can enter a keyword, and this way filter cards by Card ID, Owner, Title (keyword), Tags, or Custom fields values. Click on the gear icon in the Board filter's search box to configure your search. By default, the card ID, title, owner, and tags options are enabled for new boards. The board will be filtered instantly, and only cards that match the criteria you specified will be displayed.

For ease of use, the regular card fields and the custom fields are grouped into two categories, so you can expand/collapse one of the categories if needed.

For example:  Filter your board by Owner and specify the user's name from the dropdown list. Only cards assigned to the selected user will be displayed on the board.

Note: When using the filter's text field to search for work items, you can use the advanced settings to auto-expand populated columns and lanes and/or auto-collapse unpopulated columns and lanes.

Tip: If you select "self," you will filter only cards assigned to yourself.

You can select the "or" option to add more values for a selected card property. In that particular example, when you select a second owner, the board will instantly display cards assigned to both users.

The small blue toggle button on the right of each property will color the area blue indicating when the filter is switched on for that property.

You can save your frequently used filtering configurations by creating quick filters.

2.1. How to remove the filter?

To remove the filter:

• Switch off the blue toggle button OR
• Close the green indicator at the top of the panel by clicking on the “x.”

This tab also displays the number of cards matching your search and clicking on the number of results will display a list of the cards that match the filter.

2.2. Advanced filtering options

With the Advanced Filtering tool, you can filter by:

• "Owner" is /is not (select a username from the dropdown)
  • You can also search the Contributor fields (if such are available on your board) for the username you enter by enabling the option.

• "Deadline" is / is not / before / after / is between / is in (x days ago) / was more than (x days ago)
• "Priority" is /is not (Critical, High, Average, Low) 
• "Color" is /is not (select the color) 
• "Tag" is / is not / contains / does not contain
• "Size" is equal to / is not equal to / is greater than / is lesser than
• "Type" is / is not
• "Blocked state" is/is not (blocked)
• "Watched" by is define the username
• "Sticker" is/is not
• "Attachments" are/are not present
• "Cards" is/ is not Linked (Parent, Children, Relative, Successor, Predecessor). 
  Note: Users can filter out all linked cards on a certain board.  Moreover, they can use the filter to instantly find all cards that are linked to a certain card or an Initiative as parent/children/relative/successor/predecessor. 
• "Card" is linked to — enter a Card ID or Title
• “SLE” is / is not exceeded or present — This is particularly useful when you want to quickly identify cards with overdue SLAs. Here are the possible combinations:
  • “is + exceeded” will filter cards with at least one overdue SLE
  • “is + present” will filter all cards that have an SLE
  • “is not + exceeded” will filter cards with SLE where none are overdue
  • “is not + present” will filter all cards that don't have an SLE
• “Planned Start” * is / is not / before / after / is between / is within / was more than — filter initiatives based on their planned start date.
• “Planned End” * is / is not / before / after / is between / is within / was more than — filter initiatives based on their planned end date.
• Milestones contains / contains all / does not contain — filter cards based on the milestones they are associated with.
• The "Last Moved" option helps users to filter their boards based on the last cards' movement through their workflow in the desired time period. Users can filter by date using any of the following commands:
  Before: The “before: YYYY-MM-DD” criteria yields result for cards that have been moved before
  and within the dates specified.
  After: The “after: YYYY-MM-DD” criteria yields result for cards that have been moved after and within the dates specified.
  Is between: displays cards that have been moved during a specified date range. This helps users to verify if tasks are progressing forward as expected in terms of time.  
  More than: Fill in the number of days in the dedicated box (for example, 7 days). This setup instantly displays cards that have spent more than 7 days without being moved. It acts as an indicator when a card remains stuck for too long at a certain stage of your process flow.  
  Less than:  Fill in the number of days in the dedicated box (for example, 7 days). This setup instantly displays cards that have spent less than 7 days without being moved.
• "Custom Fields": If you have added custom fields to your board, they will also be available as filter criteria in your board filter (e.g. custom fields of type “Dropdown,” etc.). This also applies to the standard fields — Created at, Last modified, Reporter, and Last Moved. If you don't see them in the filter, make sure they are added to the board first.

* This applies to initiatives only. Cards in Cards Workflows will be filtered out when this filter is enabled.

Note: The order in which the custom fields are displayed in the board filter is determined by the order of custom fields for the selected board. This can be changed by clicking on the 3 dots in the sidebar menu, selecting 'Custom Fields', and using the 'Reorder Custom Fields' menu to rearrange the fields as needed.

Important: There is an And / Or slider on the top of the menu to configure if you want the filter properties to be mutually exclusive or not.

2.3. How to customize the Advanced filtering options

You may want to filter by a given property, which is not visible by default. You can configure the properties in the Board filter. Just click on the gear-wheel icon and select which property you want to see and which ones shall be hidden by default: 

You can toggle between the custom view and the default view properties using the switch at the bottom of the filter panel: