Filters and saved filters

A workspace usually serves more than one concern: one customer's equipment, one site, one fleet of vehicles, the cages out at a supplier. Filters narrow the dashboard to one of them, and saved filters keep that view of the workspace so anyone can return to it with one click.

A filter is not tied to one page. Set it once, and the Overview, the map, the asset and device lists, trips, zones, alerts and statistics all show only the assets it matches. A saved filter is therefore a slice of the whole workspace, not a search on one list.

Filters

The filter bar sits at the top of the Overview, Assets, Devices, Map, Trips, Zones, Alerts and Statistics pages. It looks the same on each of them, with the same fields in the same order:

Assets or Devices: what the page shows. The Assets and Devices pages each fix their own.
Asset name: part of a name, a tag ID or a custom field value. A serial number read off the asset finds it, whichever custom field holds it.
Zone: assets in a zone, in any zone, or in no zone.
Zone keyword: assets in any zone that carries the keyword (see Zones).
Team: the assets of one team, or of no team.
Type and Keyword: the asset's type, and any keyword on it.
Custom field: one of your own fields, and part of its value. A field with no value typed matches every asset that has the field.
Last position: how old the asset's last position is, or Missing for no position in 7 days.
Status: active assets, archived assets only, or both.

Filters stay set as you move between these pages. Filter the assets to one type and one team, then open the map: it shows those assets only. Open Trips and you see their trips. Open Alerts and you see their alerts. The web address carries the filters, so a link you send opens the same filtered page.

Filters read each asset as it is now. Filtered to a team, Trips lists the trips of that team's assets, including trips made before they joined it.

A field a page cannot use is greyed out there, and keeps its value for the other pages. On Trips, the zone, last-position and status filters are greyed out, because they describe where an asset is now, not where its trips went. On Alerts, the Overview and Statistics, last position and status are greyed out. On Zones, the zone filters are greyed out, because the zones are what the page lists. A field with nothing to choose yet, such as Type when no asset has a type, is greyed out too. Click a greyed field to see why.

When nothing matches, the page says so and offers Clear filters. Clear filters is also in the bar, and so is the menu item of the page you are on.

Saved filters

A question you ask every week does not need setting up every week. Set the filters, click Save filters, and name them. The saved filters appear as a chip at the top of the bar, and one click applies them again, on any page.

Saved filters hold the question, not the answer. Applying them re-runs it, so they always show today's position. They also show each person only what their own access allows: the same saved filters applied by a supplier's team list that supplier's equipment.

Saved filters are shared with everyone in the workspace. Filters saved on Devices also appear on the other pages, and on each page they select what that page lists.

Changing saved filters

Click the chip to apply the saved filters.
Change any field.
Click Update with their name. Save as new keeps them as they were and saves the changes under a new name instead.

The pencil beside the chip renames the saved filters or sets their breakdown. The bin deletes them. The assets they select are untouched.

Breakdowns

When you save filters you can choose Break down by team, type or keyword. Applied, they then show a count for each group beside the chip. One set of saved filters answers "how many at each supplier" without a set per supplier, and a new supplier appears on its own.

Regular updates

A list you read every Monday can arrive by email instead.

Apply the saved filters and click the clock beside them.
Choose how often to send the list: daily, weekly on a chosen day, or monthly, and the time.
Choose the channels: Send to every channel, or only the channels with a keyword you pick.
Click Update with their name. It saves the schedule, and any filter changes you made with it.

The email carries the numbers as well as the list: the total, and a line per group when the saved filters have a breakdown. The rows are behind a Download link rather than attached, because a list can run to tens of thousands of rows. The link opens the dashboard and the file downloads from there, so you are asked to sign in if you are not already. The file is kept for seven days, and it holds only what the person opening it is allowed to see.

To send each supplier their own copy, give the supplier's email channel a keyword, and pick the same keyword on their saved filters. The channel list offers only the keywords your channels use, so a send cannot be addressed to nobody.

Send now, in the same panel, sends the list at once, so you can check the recipients before trusting a weekly send. It does not replace the scheduled send.

Example: tracking inbound shipments

Zone keywords, saved filters and regular updates answer a weekly "where is our equipment" question without any extra setup:

Put one keyword on every supplier site zone, such as vendor, and another on every zone at the destination, such as site.
Give the equipment in scope a shared keyword, such as inbound.
At the supplier: filter by zone keyword vendor and keyword inbound.
Arrived: change the zone keyword to site.
On the road: set Zone to in no zone and keep the keyword. An asset that has left a supplier and not reached the destination is in no zone.

Save each of the three, broken down by team, with a team per supplier. Three chips then give every supplier's count in each state, on every page, and a weekly update sends them to the people who need them.