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Creating Variable Filter Criteria

A variable filter allows you to filter a group of objects based on a variable value. The value used in the filter is only determined at the time the filter is used by looking up the current value of the selected attribute or relationship. A specific, fixed value cannot be selected. For example, you might want to filter employee names based on the name of the employee currently logged in, rather than a specific employee name.
For example, you could select a group of work requests that were requested by the current employee (the employee currently logged in), regardless of who that is. This allows you to create one configuration for a table (for example, a “My Requests” configuration), rather than separate configurations for each of the users (such as “Joe’s Requests” or “Sarah’s Requests”).
To do this, you can filter the Work Request class’s Requestor attribute by the Current Employee. Since this data is not part of the Work Request class, you would use a relationship (or join path) to capture that data. In this case, you would select the relationship Enterprise.CurrentEmployee, and the attribute EmployeeName.
This topic describes how to create variable filters on an existing calculation input. For general information about using filtering criteria in a calculation input, see Filtering Criteria. For detailed information about creating filter-based calculation inputs, see Creating Calculation Inputs Based on Filters.
Note: To create filter-based calculation inputs, you should a good understanding of APM object modeling concepts. To learn more about the object model, see Object Model Overview.

To Create a Variable Filter Criteria

1.
Open or create a filter-based calculation input.
2.
To add a filter criteria, click the New list and then Variable Filter . The Filter Criterion dialog appears.
3.
Select the join path and attribute on which you will base the filter:
Setting Name
Description
Relationship from
The relationship (join path) used to navigate to the class and its attribute or relationship.
Use the join path to select a related class. If you are filtering based on an attribute, you can then select an attribute from that class. If you are selecting an attribute from the base class, leave this box blank.
You can select any relationship that points to a single instance of the related object. This includes the following relationship types only:
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References one
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Owned by
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Scoped by
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Hierarchical parent
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Contains one
For example, to filter a list of tasks based on the asset, you would select the Work Order Task class’ Asset to work on relationship. Or, you could select a relationship from the Work Order Task class to the Maintenance Group class. You could then use the Maintenance Group Name attribute to filter the group of tasks.
To select a join path, click . Expand the hierarchy until you see the class that you want, select it, and click OK. The Class box displays the class you selected.
Attribute to use for filtering
The attribute that you want to use to filter the data. Select the appropriate attribute from the list. This setting is only applicable to criteria that are based on an attribute.
For example, if you are filtering a group of work order tasks, you might select the Task status attribute. You can then select one of the task statuses (for example, Planned) as the value to filter on.
The list contains only eligible attributes that are owned directly by the specified class. This means that the following types of attributes are excluded:
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Binary objects
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Html texts
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Icons
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Variable length strings
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Variants
4.
If you are creating multiple filters based on the same attribute, you might wish to change the And/or setting. See Filtering Criteria.
5.
Select the Condition to use for the filter. The choices available vary depending on the data type of the selected attribute.
6.
Next, select the join path and attribute that contain the data to be used for filtering:
Setting Name
Description
Join path to filter value
The join path starts at the indicator class. The system interprets this as the indicator that owns the calculation input. For example, you could set up a filter to select work orders that belong to the same site as the one that owns the current indicator, in which case the join path is Asset.Site.
To do this, click . The Select Join Path dialog appears. Expand the hierarchy until you see the class that contains the filter value. Select the appropriate class and click OK.
Attribute that contains the filter value
Select the attribute that contains the data to be used for filtering. The list contains any eligible attributes owned directly by the specified class.
For example, to select work orders that belong to the same site as the one that owns the current indicator, the join path is Asset.Site and the filter value is Site name.
7.
When you are finished defining the criterion, click OK.