Filter & Sort Controls

Overview

Filter and sort controls let the person looking at a portal table narrow it down themselves: filter by a field, search across text fields, and sort the results. They are configured per table (and per role) in the admin UI, and they apply on top of what the role is already allowed to see.

This is most useful once a role can see every record in a table. A directory of hundreds of contractors or a board of every open job is hard to use without a way to search and filter it down.

How It Relates to Other Filtering

These controls are end-user facing and optional. They are separate from the admin-side record filter, which is a fixed condition you set, and from linked-record scoping, which limits a user to their own rows.

The controls always compose on top of those: they can only narrow the list further, never widen it. A user can never use them to see a record the role was not already allowed to see.

Enabling Them

1. 1

   Open the Display tab and turn the controls on

   Open the table in the admin and go to the Display tab. Scroll down to the Filter & Sort Controls card and turn on Enable filter, search and sort. Three field lists appear.

2. 2

   Choose which fields users can filter, sort and search

   Pick the fields for each list. You are choosing what the controls offer, not changing what the role can see.

   • Filterable fields: the fields users can filter on. Only fields with a fixed set of values qualify: single select, multiple select, and rating.
   • Sortable fields: the fields users can sort by.
   • Search fields: the text fields the search box looks through.

   Save the portal and the controls appear on that table's pages.

   

What Users See

The same controls render in both layouts, sized to fit. Filters are staged as the user selects them and only take effect when they press Apply (or Enter in the search box). For a single field, ticking several values matches any of them. Across different fields, all of the conditions must match. The current filters are reflected in the page URL, so a filtered view can be bookmarked or shared.

Gallery view

A filter panel runs down the left side with the search box, a section per filterable field, and a sort control.

Table view

A toolbar sits above the table with the search box, a button per filterable field, and an Apply button. Clicking a column header sorts the whole table.

On narrow screens both layouts collapse to a single Filters button that opens the controls in a panel.

Notes

• Filtering and sorting run server-side, so they stay correct across pages on large tables.
• Number and date range filters are not included yet. Use the search box and the admin record filter for those cases for now.
• A rating field shows as stars and can be filtered by the number of stars.

Next Steps

• Record Filtering - Set a fixed, admin-side filter on a table
• Role-Based Access - Give each role its own tables, fields, and controls
• Default Sort - Choose how a table is sorted when it first loads