How to configure organization filter parameters

Set a value that filters every Dashboard for everyone in an organization, without them seeing a filter. Use this to give two organizations the same Report and have each see only its own data.

Before you begin

You need:

1. The Account Admin role
2. The organization already created. See How to create an organization
3. The exact column name you’re filtering on, as it appears in the underlying data and not what it’s labelled in the Report
4. The value that identifies this organization’s rows in that column

A filter parameter binds a Key (a column name) to a Value, and applies it to every Dashboard opened by users in the organization. Key = Region, Value = North means those users see only rows where Region is North.

Three things make this feature worth understanding properly before you use it:

It’s invisible to users. There’s no filter chip on the UI but only a hidden filter. People see fewer rows and have no way to know why. When someone reports missing data, this is the layer nobody thinks to check.

It fails silently. If the Key doesn’t match a column in a Report’s data, the parameter is ignored for that Report, no error, no warning. The same parameter can filter one Report correctly and do nothing at all to another, purely because the column names differ.

Matching is exact. The Key has to match the column name character for character, including case. A rename at the data source breaks the filter without any signal.

Steps

Step 1. Confirm the exact column name

Do this first and don’t skip it. Open the dataset or custom script behind the Reports you want filtered and read the column name off it directly. Copy it rather than typing it, most failures here are a case difference or a trailing space.

If the Reports you want to filter are built on different datasets, check the column name is the same in all of them. Where it isn’t, the parameter will work for some and quietly not for others.

Step 2. Open the organization

From the main navigation, click Admin, then open the Organization Management tab. Find the organization and click the edit icon.

Step 3. Add a parameter

Under Configuration Parameters, click the add icon. A new parameter row appears.

Step 4. Set the Key and Value

1. Key: the column name, exactly as it appears in the data
2. Value: the value that identifies this organization’s rows, for example North

Step 5. Set Type to Filter

Choose Filter. This is what makes the parameter act on Dashboards.

Step 6. Set the Filter Operation

Choose how the value is matched.

Step 7. Add any further parameters

Repeat for each parameter this organization needs.

Step 8. Save and verify against a real Report

Click Save, then open a Dashboard as a user in this organization and check the row counts are what you expect.

Verify rather than assume. A parameter that silently doesn’t match looks identical to one that isn’t filtering because there’s nothing to filter and the difference matters enormously if you’re relying on it to separate one organization’s data from another’s.

Result

Every user in the organization sees Dashboards filtered by the parameter, with no filter visible in their interface. Reports whose data doesn’t contain the Key column are unaffected.

Common issues

1. It filters one Report but not another. The second Report’s dataset doesn’t contain a column with that Key. The parameter is ignored where the column is absent.
2. It worked and now doesn’t. A column was renamed at the data source. Matching is exact, and a rename breaks it silently. Update the Key.
3. Users see no data at all. The Value doesn’t match anything in the column. Check for a spelling or case difference between the Value and the actual data.
4. Users report missing data and nothing looks wrong. This is the expected symptom of a misconfigured filter parameter.