Si Blog

Some of you may have probably noticed that apart from sheets, a Prism document may also contains 'questions'.  Unlike a sheet that is used to visualize data, a question is a special type of canvas used to visually create filters and segment data.  It is also useful for observing the structure of a complex filter.

Defining a Dimensionality or Base Filter

The first thing to decide before beginning is which dimension you wish to filter.  Once decided, drag this dimension from the Data Browser and drop it onto the Question canvas.  A box representing all members in the dimension will appear.

Should you drop a previously created filter on this canvas you will see the filter's entire structure directly in the Question, allowing for further filtering or modifications.

Filtering a Dimension

When hovering with the mouse over the box, four white areas will appear.  Clicking on one of them will present a list of available filter operations you can perform on the dimension.  This are the same filter types as available directly from the data browser.  For more information about filters and filter types, visit our introduction to filters page.

Clicking on the requested type of filter (in our example case a Top Ranking filter) will create this filter with default values you can edit and change.  The name of the filter can be changed by double-clicking the title area.

Repeating The Process

You can repeat this process as many times as you wish, to create as many filters as you require.  In this example, we've created a Top Ranking and a Bottom Ranking filter off the Product Name dimension to segment it into two groups - top selling products and bottom selling products.  The filters themselves can be further filtered in the same manner.  In the example below, we connected both Top and Bottom filters into a Union box to create a single filter that returns both top and bottom products.