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In case you missed it, TaskRay has a cool new way of filtering. If you’re brand new to TaskRay filtering overall and aren’t sure where to start, or currently using Classic Filtering and are ready to migrate to Enhanced Filtering and need some help with how to strategize the setup, you’ve come to the right place! Let’s talk about how you can get in the right mindset to implement Enhanced Filtering for optimal success. The main thing to remember here is that TaskRay Classic Filtering and Enhanced Filtering are two different mechanisms. Enhanced Filtering provides more dynamic filtering, streamlining views and enabling more customization. So, you should start thinking about your company’s filtering needs from a fresh perspective. For instance, you get broader buckets of data which means the drill down capabilities come into play with the flex filters your users have access to. Your custom board filters list should be shorter than in your Classic Filtering. The best way to be strategic about filter assignment and creation is to break it down by user type and what their filtering requirements are.

First, it’s important to understand how Enhanced Filtering impacts different types of users. Admins, Managers, and End Users are all important and have different requirements for filtering in TaskRay. We want to streamline the use, setup, and maintenance of filters so everyone benefits. 

Admins – Be excited! Your life is about to become a lot easier. Although you may not use board filters everyday, they definitely impact your work. With Enhanced Filtering you should have less requests to create and edit custom board filters than before. How and why? Because you now can think of filters as a top-down inheritance. You will apply filters to the biggest groups first then assign more specific filters to more distinct groups. You shouldn’t have to create one-off filters for just 1 or 2 people anymore.

Managers – I can’t tell you how many organizations have manager-specific board filters (ie: Laura’s Projects, My Team’s Projects, etc.). Prior to Enhanced Filtering, setting up multiple board filters with very specific criteria was our recommended route to give managers a quick way to access a list of projects owned by their direct reports. While board filters are still important with the new filtering approach, they serve a different purpose. On the new enhanced filters, think of board filters as those broad buckets, or starting points, for filtering the projects. So, rather than creating specific board filters for every purpose, start big (such as ‘All Projects’ or ‘In-Flight Projects’), and then narrow down on the data using Flex Filters. 

Let’s take a look at an example where the admin has already configured some filters for the manager persona using the following assumption: managers will likely need to see a list of projects owned by specific users. And beyond that, projects that start or end during a certain time. This is where Flex Filters will be a Manager’s best friend. In the example below, I, as the manager, selected In-Flight Projects as my Board Filter (i.e. the broad bucket of projects, my starting point) and then filtered the Owner to Laura using Flex Filters. This will show me all of Laura’s active projects.

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So, when configuring the Flex Filters and providing the options to filter by, think about what specific filters a manager would use. User, Start Date, Estimated End Date, and maybe even Progress.

End Users – Most End Users are focused on their projects. Start by thinking about the most commonly used fields that your End Users filter on now whether that be in Classic Filtering or in reporting. Using the Flex Filters for those same fields will be key here. A common flex filter used by end users is Estimated End Date. Or maybe it’s by Template Source to quickly see certain project types. 

Since teamwork makes the dreamwork, I recommend gathering input from the different user types that use TaskRay. Here are some questions to ask your users before you start building:

  1. What are the most common data segments you need to see in TaskRay?
  2. What data groups are not captured by TaskRay Standard board Filters?
  3. What additional fields would be helpful in further refinement of your data?
  4. What data points help you to define your most important work (ie: List, Estimated End Date, Priority, etc.)?
  5. What commonalities are there between users who need to see certain data?
  6. What existing user organization mechanisms are in place in your Salesforce Org?
  7. Of the above user organization mechanisms, which allows you to capture the broadest user group with these needs?

Answering these questions should help you see 3 main buckets of information.

  • Board Filter
  • Flex Filters
  • Assignee Group

With all of this information in hand, you’ll be armed to start creating the filters that allow your team to really slice and dice the project data they need.  

I recommend taking a look at this support article for more best practices on how to think about Enhanced Filtering for your company. Then, check out part 2 of this blog series that will cover tips and tricks for how to best use the new filters. Please reach out to us at support@taskray.com if you have any questions!