Summary
Slicers can be used to dynamically filter several Widgets on the same Page by date range
They enable you to quickly scroll through data to see how it develops over time, without having to edit Widgets individually
Slicers help you to identify any trends, such as improvements or warning signs. They are just one of the ways you can track data changes using Planhat
Who is this article for?
All Planhat Users
It's particularly relevant to Planhat builders/admins who configure their tenant for their team (e.g. CS Ops)
Article contents
Introduction
In customer management, and indeed all aspects of business, it's very important to track development over time. For example:
If you've implemented a new Sales or CS strategy, is it leading to the desired improvements?
Is there an issue developing, such as decreased adoption or customer satisfaction, or increased churn?
Is there an abrupt change in ticket volume, and if so, why?
Planhat includes a wide range of functionality for this "time awareness". This includes time-series data (Metrics), logs, field history, Revenue Pages, various specialist chart Widgets (such as Funnels) ... and Date Slicers, which we will discuss in this article.
Slicers are a way you can apply a dynamic date filter to multiple chart Widgets within a Page. They enable you to easily jump forward or backward in time, with the data in the relevant Widgets updating to each selected timeframe. This saves you time and effort as you don't need to manually edit each Widget individually, or set up multiple copies of Widgets or Pages to display data for different date ranges.
Slicers are incredibly useful to help you identify trends over time. They are dynamic yet simple, and they enable you to browse your data with ease!
What are Slicers?
Slicers are specialist date-range filters that you can use in Pages with chart Widgets - so in upgraded Planhat (ws.planhat.com) that's Dashboards and Presentations.
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Slicers are superpowered (compared to applying a standard date filter) in that:
They are "permanent" (in that they are long-lived rather than temporary, although you can delete them) and centrally managed - so you can select to apply a Slicer that's already been created in your tenant, rather than creating it from scratch each time
They can be easily applied to multiple Widgets in a Page at once
This includes cases where the Widgets are displaying data for different data models (objects) and so the Date Slicer is applying to different fields
You can click to quickly shift the dates of the data being displayed, and this will apply to all Widgets in the Page that have that Slicer applied
For each Slicer you create, you specify a default value, such as "This Month". This is the filter that will apply as default when the Page is viewed. Then, when you click forward or backward in the Slicer (we describe how below), the data display moves forward or backward by the same unit of time - e.g. if your Slicer has the default value of "This Month" and you click ">", it will move to showing you the dates for next month (example shown below).
We discuss more technical details later in this article (starting here).
Why use Slicers?
In the introduction, we talked about how Slicers are one way that Planhat enables you to understand data changes over time. But what are the particular use cases for Slicers specifically?
It's common that when you create a Dashboard or Presentation Page, visualizing a variety of data in charts (Widgets), you'll want to apply filters to those Widgets so that they display a more specific subset of data. Sometimes, you might want to only show the data corresponding to a particular date range - either looking at current data, or particular windows in the past or the future. Often, you will want to view the data for different date ranges, so you can identify any trends, including opportunities or warning signs. Slicers are the perfect tool for you in this case.
For instance, you might create a Dashboard that visualizes your data related to Opportunities (the Opportunity data model). You could be displaying Opportunities split down by Sales Stage, or Owner, or Product etc. Then you could apply a Slicer to one or more of the Widgets on this Page (e.g. referring to the "Expected Close Date" field on each), and that way as well as seeing the current breakdown of the data, you could see how it changes (or changed) over time.
With Planhat, you have the choice to apply a different Slicer/filter to each Widget within a Dashboard or Presentation Page, or apply the same Slicer to multiple Widgets at once. This gives you maximum flexibility whilst being very efficient - you aren't forced to apply the same filter/Slicer to all charts on the Page if you don't want to, but conversely with Slicers you don't need to individually change the date filter for every Widget if you want them to show the same date range.
And, as we have discussed, with Slicers you can easily shift dates and scroll through your data - you don't need to keep editing a date filter, or create duplicate Widgets or Pages each with different date filters applied, in order to visualize the data over time.
How to set up Slicers
📌 Important to note
In this section, we will discuss how to create and manage Slicers.
In your tenant, you may choose to only give some Roles the ability to create/edit/delete Slicers - for example, you could enable this just for the "Administrator" Role, which you give to Planhat admins/builders such as CS Ops.
If your tenant has restricted access to Slicer management in this way and you do not have permission to set up Slicers, you will still be able to use existing Slicers, so skip to the sections below about using Slicers (starting here).
Slicer permissions
Access to Slicers is controlled by a workflow permission (toggle switch) called "Slicers".
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Firstly, this needs to be enabled for your tenant within "Tenant Permissions", configurable by a Planhat "Super Admin" (i.e. Planhat staff member). If you cannot see the Slicer workflow permission to enable/disable within Roles, please reach out to your Planhat CSM/TAM or our Support team
If this permission is not enabled in your tenant, you will not be able to create and therefore use Slicers
Next, you should ensure that this permission is enabled in each Role you would like to give full Slicer access to
Roles without this permission enabled will still be able to apply/use Slicers that have already been created in your tenant
Roles with this permission enabled will additionally be able to create/edit/delete Slicers. They will see a new section within the "Settings" Global Tool (described below)
📌 Important to note
Your Role will need the "Admin Access" workflow permission to access to the "Settings" Global Tool.
Managing Slicers in the "Settings" Global Tool
If the Slicers workflow permission is enabled for your Role, you will see a tab for Slicers listed within the "General" heading within the "Settings" Global Tool.
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Here you can:
View details of all Slicers that have been created in your tenant (by any User - not just you), including seeing whether that Slicer is currently being used (denoted by a tick/checkmark)
Update or delete an existing Slicer (via the ellipsis symbol on the right-hand side of each row - shown in the bottom right of the screenshot below)
Create new Slicers via the orange "Add new Slicer" button in the top-right (shown in the screenshot above)
Creating a new Slicer
Whether ...
... you create a new Slicer within the "Slicers" part of the "Settings" Global Tool (as we just described above - click the orange "Add new Slicer" button in the top right) ...
... or create a Slicer directly when you are configuring a Widget (described in the next part of this article) ...
... you will see the same modal to fill in the Slicer details:
Type: Leave this as "date". (Currently, this is the only option)
Name: Give your Slicer a name. This will be displayed in various places, such as in the dropdown menu when you select a Slicer for a Widget
Description: Optionally, you can add a description for the Slicer
Default value: Choose your default value from either the pre-set dynamic options (such as "Last Month" or "Next Week"), or alternatively specify a date range. What you select here actually has two effects (which we describe in further detail later in this article):
It sets the default value that the Slicer applies
It sets the timespan (e.g. a month, or a week) when you shift dates using the Slicer
At the very bottom of the "Default value" dropdown menu, you should pick a time zone (shown below) - this determines how the filter will define dates. You can read more about the general concept of "date time" in Planhat here
You can mouse over a "Default value" in the Slicer table to view its time zone (also shown below)
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Once you've finished configuring your Slicer, press the orange "Save" button in the bottom right to save it. Your Slicer can then be applied to one or more Widgets within a Page. We describe how you can do this in the next part of this article.
How to apply Slicers to Widgets
When you're building a Dashboard or Presentation Page, you apply Slicers to individual Widgets (charts). There are two main ways you can do it, and the relevant method(s) depends on the type of Widget you are configuring.
📌 Important to note
It is not possible to simply apply a Slicer directly to a whole Page, as some configuration is required per Widget.
Method 1 - in the Widget filter
This method applies to most Chart Widget types; the exceptions are certain types of Trend Charts, the method for which we describe below. For some types of Trend Charts (e.g. Cohort Charts), you could potentially use either method.
To apply a Slicer to a Bar Chart or Pie Chart etc.:
When creating/editing a Widget, click on "Add filters" in the top-right of the chart preview (shown below)
Start creating a rule, and select the date-time field you'd like the Slicer to apply to (such as "Created Date" if your Widget is for the Company model, or "Expected Close Date" if you've selected the Opportunity model)
In the second dropdown menu, scroll to the bottom of the date range options and select "Slicer". Then in the third dropdown, either select an existing Slicer, or click "+ Add new Slicer" at the bottom if you want to create a new Slicer - the method to create a new Slicer is the same as you have just seen for the "Settings" Global Tool
With your filter/rule completed, you can now click the orange "Save" button in the bottom right to apply it. You'll now see an orange calendar icon appear in the top right of the chart preview
Method 2 - in the "Period" within Widget settings
For some types of Trend Charts (e.g. Face/Off Charts), you can't add a filter in the same way, but instead you can select a Slicer within the "Period" part of the chart settings when creating or editing the Widget.
In the Widget configuration modal (i.e. the Widget settings), scroll down to the "Period" section, click on where it says "Manual timespan" to open up the dropdown, and select "Slicer timespan" from the list to switch to that option. You'll see an orange calendar icon appear in the top right of the chart preview
You can now choose an existing Slicer from the dropdown list that appears below, or click "+ Add new Slicer" to create a new Slicer, as previously discussed
How to view and use Slicers once applied to Widgets
When you've looking at a Page with Slicers applied, in either Edit or Explore modes, you will see the applied Slicer(s) at the top of the Page in orange (shown below) - this is effectively a new "button" that you can interact with - we describe this next. If you mouse over it, a tooltip message will tell you the names/titles of the Widgets it's applied to. If you are in View mode, you won't see the orange "button".
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Whichever mode you're in, you will see orange calendar symbols on Widgets with a Slicer applied (shown below). You can mouse over each calendar symbol to see the name of the relevant Slicer.
Let's focus on the orange "button" at the top in Explore or Edit modes:
As well as applying the default date filter initially (e.g. "This Month" in the example screenshot above), with Slicers you can click the direction arrows (< and >) to scroll/shift backward or forward in time, by time increments corresponding to the default. So in the case of the "This Month" example, if I click the back arrow once, it sets the dates to last month ...
... whereas (from the default) if I click the forward arrow once, it sets the dates to next month ...
... and so on - you can click an arrow multiple times if you like, to see data for a series of adjacent time periods.
As you change the date range in this way, the data in the Widgets with this Slicer applied will automatically update to correspond to the relevant time period.
If you've shifted a Slicer date range and would like to quickly jump back to its default, you can simply click on the circular arrow button that appears in between the arrows once you've clicked one - shown below.
Note that when you use the arrows to shift the timespan of the data (as opposed to updating the Slicer in the "Settings" Global Tool), this change is temporary - if you refresh your browser window, it will revert back to the default value; and if you share your Page with a colleague, they will see the default value you have set for the Slicer.
🚀 Tip
Remember that a Slicer can apply to multiple Widgets in a Page, and when you scroll through them it updates the date range and therefore data for all applicable Widgets.
It's also possible to apply different Slicers to different Widgets on a Page, and then scroll through each of those Slicers independently.
🚀 Tip
If you don't see the data you expect in a particular date range, check the time and time zone of the field data (you can mouse over a cell to see the time zone, like in the example screenshot below), rather than just looking at the date, and compare that with the time zone of your Slicer.
We discussed this above (in the section on creating Slicers). If you would like further detail on the general topic of "date time", check out this separate article.