What is context filter in tableau with example?

Question

Could someone tell me what is context filter in Tableau with an example?

Answer 1

The Context filter is a filter applied inside Tableau to restrict the further filters to only process data from the first filter. This concept of restricting access to data arose because all the filters in Tableau are independent filters, meaning whenever a filter is applied it will process all the data to produce the result. So, you could use context filters when you need to apply several filers in succession.

Let me explain the context filter in Tableau with an example:

1. If you need to find out something specific like top 10 thriller genre books sold in a book shop.
2. First fill the rows and columns. Here let’s take Sales as the column and sub-category (this contains all the books sold in that book shop) as rows.
3. Next step right-click the sub-category field in the filter shelf and click on the tab named Top. Select by-field, and on successive drop-downs select “Top” “10” by “Sales” “Sum”.
4. Then drag the dimension category to the filter shelf and select thriller, from the list. Now you could see several sub-categories of books that are sold under thriller.
5. Finally, select the thriller category, and right-click to select Add to context. And now you could see your desired list of top 10 books sold under the thriller genre in your book store.

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