Providing interactivity to users: Selectors

Selectors provide dashboards with interactivity, allowing each user to change how he sees the data. A selector can change:

Panels in a panel stack
The data displayed in a Grid/Graph
The contents of dynamic text fields (a text field that is a reference to an object on a report) in a panel stack
The contents of another selector
Data displayed in a Transaction Services-enable document

A control that is updated by a selector is referred to as the target of the selector. A selector can target multiple objects. For example, the same selector can target both a Grid/Graph and dynamic text fields on the same panel, or both a Grid/Graph and another selector.

Selectors allow a user to:

Flip through the panels in a panel stack. A panel stack is a collection of panels, which allow the user to see different predefined views of data in the same document, as shown in the image below. For steps to create a selector to flip through the panels in a panel stack, see Creating a selector for a panel stack.
Display different metrics or different elements of attributes, custom groups, or consolidations in a Grid/Graph, as shown in the image below. For steps to create a selector to:

Choose the elements to display on a Grid/Graph, see Creating a selector for elements on a Grid/Graph.
Choose the metrics to display on a Grid/Graph, see Creating a selector for a metric on a Grid/Graph.

Example of a selector control in a Grid/Graph

Display different elements of attributes, custom groups, or consolidations in a panel stack using dynamic text fields. A dynamic text field is a text field populated by an object in the dataset; it is essentially a reference to an object on a report, as shown in the image below. For steps to create a selector that updates a dynamic text field, see Creating a selector that updates a dynamic text field on a panel stack.
Filter data based on the value of a metric. This type of selector can be either of the following styles:

A slider, which the user moves to select the minimum and maximum values to display. For example, a document contains a Grid/Graph with Region and the Revenue metric. A selector displays the range of revenue values, and a user can move the slider to select the minimum and maximum revenue to display or hide data in the Grid/Graph.
A qualification, which the user completes to filter the metric's values. This type of metric condition selector allows a user to select an operator for the qualification (such as Equals, Greater Than, or Between), and to type the value to filter on. For example, given the same regional revenue Grid/Graph described above, a user could display only the revenue values greater than $5,000,000 or only the top-ranking 5 regions in term of revenue.

If a title bar is displayed for the selector, a user can also select whether to filter on the metric values or rank. For steps to create a selector to filter based on the value of a metric, see Creating a selector that filters metric values.

Update the elements displayed in another selector. For example, in the image below, the selector on the left contains a list of book categories and the selector on the right contains a list of individual books. When the user selects Literature from the selector on the left (the source selector), the selector on the right (the target selector) is updated to display only books that fall under the Literature category, instead of displaying a long list of every available book. For steps to allow a selector to update another selector, see Creating selectors that target other selectors.
Submit, recalculate, or discard changes to data displayed in a Transaction Services-enabled document. (For details on Transaction Services documents, see the Report Services Document Creation Guide.) This type of selector can be either a button or a text link. For example, in the image below, the grid contains sales data for several call centers. A user can edit the name of a call center, then click the Submit button to update the underlying data, or edit the revenue for a call center and click the Recalculate Values link to reapply the number formatting applied to revenue values in the grid. For steps to create a selector button or link, see the Report Services Document Creation Guide.

Examples of each scenario above, with images, are in the MicroStrategy Report Services Document Creation Guide.

The following image shows an example of a Drop-down selector (on the left) and a Radio Button selector (on the right), where attribute elements (in this case, elements from the Book attribute) are displayed. For example images of the different selector styles, see Defining a selector.

Example of a Drop-down style selector Example of Radio Button style selector

Once you have created a selector, you can choose to:

Include or exclude the selected data in an element selector or a metric condition selector. For example, if the Northeast region is selected in an element selector, you can choose to display data only for Northeast, or for all regions other than Northeast. If the selector title bar is displayed, a user can choose for himself between including or excluding the selected data (for metric condition selectors). For steps to use a selector to include or exclude data, see Determining whether the selector includes or excludes data: Selection type.
Specify the targets of a selector, or choose to have the selector automatically target all objects in the same panel or document section as the selector. For steps to choose selector targets, see Choosing targets for a selector. For steps to have the system automatically choose targets for a selector, see Automatically maintaining targets for selectors.

A selector can target multiple objects. For example, the same selector can control both a Grid/Graph and dynamic text fields on the same panel. As described in the "filter another selector" example above, the same selector can target both a Grid/Graph and another selector.
Filter or slice data in the target of the selector. A selector can either filter or slice the data. The selections made in a filtering selector are used to filter the underlying dataset before the metric values are aggregated at the level of the Grid/Graph that is displayed in the document. The selections made in slicing selectors are used to determine which slices of data are combined and shown in the Grid/Graph. For steps and more information on the differences between filtering and slicing selectors, see Applying selections as filters or slices.
Determine whether items are already chosen in the selector when it is first displayed in MicroStrategy Web. For example, by default, no items are selected in a filtering selector when it is first displayed. For steps to determine how a selector is first displayed, see Determining how the target of a selector displays (current state).
Determine whether users can make multiple selections in Slider, Listbox, Link Bar, and Button Bar style selectors. For steps, see Allowing users to select multiple items.
Determine whether the data is automatically updated when an item is selected in the selector. For steps, see Controlling how data updates: Autosubmit.