View Filters Overview
View Filters are provided so that the right skill Categories and Definitions can be hidden from, or made visible to appropriate groups of users. In larger organisations, TeamFolio™ configurations can end up having hundreds of Categories and Definitions defined, to cater for the broad set of roles and skill sets across the teams. Targeting specific Categories and/or Definitions to specific groups of users avoids people being overwhelmed with trying to fill in information that may well be irrelevant for them.
View Filters work in the same way for both categories and definitions. Each filter is a basic rule that determines whether the Category or Definition is visible on a person’s profile page based on some information in that person’s Active Directory or SharePoint User Profile attributes.
Permissions Required
To configure View Filters, the logged in user needs to be a member of an authorisation group that has either the Category View Filter Editor privilege or the Definition View Filter Editor privilege.
Navigation
From the admin menu gear icon in the top right of the web page, navigate to either View Filters>Manage by Category or View Filters>Manage by Definition:
- Click the cog icon at the top right of the page to open the admin menu ...
- ... then select the View Filters menu ...
- ... then select the Manage by Definition menu option.
Manage View Filter Page
The view filter management pages look and function in the same way for both Categories and Definitions. For this knowledge base article, we’ll use the Manage Definition View Filters admin page for any of the screenshots.
The page displays a typical admin grid or table with action buttons and standard table functions (sort, filter, etc.) that are described in the General UI Guidance article.
Name & Display Name
As with other TeamFolio entities, View Filters have a Name and a Display Name.
The first is an internal system name given to the View Filter when it is created. As you will see, it is derived from the Category or Definition name that the View Filter references, but and spaces of special characters like ‘&’ are removed from the text.
The Display Name is the same as the referenced Category or Definition name. There can be more than one View Filter for each Category or Definition, so the View Filter Name can be used to help working with all View Filters for any given Category or Definition.
Filter Policy
The View Filters Policy works on the basis of ‘show unless’ or ‘hide unless’ the rest of the View Filter rule’s conditions are met. The rule is defined using the parameters described below.
Filter Type
We currently only have one Filter Type in TeamFolio, and that is a Filter based on the value of a property in the user’s profile.
The user is the person logged in who is trying to view the Category or Definition. A User Profile Property is an attribute associated with the person’s Active Directory account or their SharePoint User Profile properties. Which User Profile Property is used for the View Filter rules is Field Name (see below).
An example might be showing a specific Definition or Category only to people who have accounts that show their Department or Manager has a particular value.
Field Name
In the Field Name drop down list, choose the User Profile Property that is to be used to check the Field Value against (see below).
Field Operand
You use the Field Operand to compare the value of the Field Name (see above) with the text you enter in the Field Value (see below). DiscoverMe currently provides you with two comparison options for the Field Operand:
- Is Equal To
- Is Not Equal To
Field Value
Enter the text string that you want to compare with the value of the User Profile Property defined in the Field Name (see above).
In the following example, we see a Definition View Filter that will hide the Definition called Human Resources from all users unless the logged in user has a value of Human Resources in the Department User Profile (Azure Active Directory) property:
The page displays a typical admin grid or table with action buttons and standard table functions (sort, filter, etc.) that are described in the General UI Guidance article. :::
Other Considerations
Automatic View Filter Creation
A TeamFolio Administrator with access to Application Preferences can set ‘open’ View Filters to be created automatically for either Categories or Definitions. If the setting is ‘Make Visible By Default’, this will automatically create a View Filter when the Category or Definition is first created. These View Filters basically set a rule to ‘hide from no user’. These automatically created View Filters can be subsequently edited, just like any other. See Application Preferences for how to manage this setting.
Keep it simple
The purpose of View Filters is to keep each person’s user profile focused on the main areas that they and their colleagues are likely to be interested in from a skills and experience perspective. You want to avoid making any custom View Filter rules overly complex or too numerous. They provide a lot of flexibility, but as with any system, flexibility can introduce complexity.
Category View Filters Impact Definitions
If a Category View Filter results in the Category being hidden from the logged in user, remember that all Definitions that are part of that Category will also be hidden. This capability should be considered when designing the overall structure of Categories, Definitions and the taxonomies that will lie behind most, if not all Definitions. We refer to this overall structure collectively as Information Architecture.