Forum Discussion
Slicer with search from multiple fields
Hi gurus,
I've got a table of objects each with a name and description. I'm trying to create a slicer that shows all the names, but allow a user to search by name or description column.
Example:
Name = Fast Car
Description = A Ferrari is a fast car.
If a user starts typing 'ferrari' in the search box, I want the slicer to filter to 'Fast Car'.
I've tried lots of things so far:
- Concatenate Name and Description into a new column and use that in the slicer. The problem here is the descriptions are long, and it means the slicer now shows 'Fast Car A Ferrari is a fast car' - which makes it really hard to read and work with.
- Add both name and description fields to the slicer - the search works here, but now I have a hierarchy which I don't want.
- Use the Text Filter visualisation with a concatenated field, and set this to filter the slicer. This works, but its not a 'real-time' search. You have to enter a term and click search. I'm after the built in search that auto-filters as typing.
- Concatenate Name and Description with a whole bunch of non-breaking spaces between them using UNICHAR(160). This makes the entries very long and results in the description part getting chopped off by the slicer and replaced with 3 dots, which is visually and functionally okish. However, the slicer is now really slow to scroll up and down. Also - yuk, why would you need to do this?!
Any better ideas?
Thanks Raymundo - your post gave me some more inspiration. I've used the old 'invisible rectangle' trick to solve this.
I've set the slicer to use a hierarchy and then put a white rectangle that is always in front over the column of chevrons.
This gives the look and feel that I was after. Hopefully in the future we'll just have a feature to use one set of fields for items, and a different set of fields for search. But in the meantime, this is pretty close...
6 Replies
Thanks Raymundo.
There isn't a hierarchy though, I have a single table with two columns, Name and Description. I guess there just isn't a way to achieve what I want to do without the hacky solutions I mentioned above!
