One way to enhance your reports in a meaningful way is to add control fields / filters. Control fields allow you to interact and work with your data in a variety of ways, mainly filtering the data according to certain dimension values. For instance, you can add a control field for countries and narrow down your report to specific countries to know the performance in different locations. You can add a control field for channels to find out which marketing channels are performing best, and so on. This guide will show you how to add and use different types of control fields (filters) in Looker Studio reports!
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How to Use Control Fields (Filters) in Looker Studio Reports
Step 1️: Click on "Add a control"
Step 2️: Select the control of choice
Step 3️: Under the SET-UP column, select the dimension you would like to filter on the Control Field
For example, we will input the control field Drop-down list and select the dimension Country. With this, we are able to filter the data by a specific country.
Types of Control Fields
1️. Drop-down list
A drop-down list provides you with a list of options to choose from to filter the data in a drop-down box. The values of a dimension are used to generate the list (e.g. city, country, channels, campaign, ad groups, device category, etc).
2️. Fixed-sized list
The fixed-size list provides you with a list of options to choose from to filter the data in a fixed-size box. It also takes the values from dimension. It works the same way as a drop-down list and is only different in the visual aspect. The drop-down list only opens when you click on it, whilst a fixed-size list always displays the options in a fixed-size box.
3️. Input box
The input box allows the user to input the information that they need to see or filter down to. You can also select the dimension to filter down to, and users can then type in the specific dimension to filter the data.
For example, we created an input box with the dimension Country and input Singapore to filter the data only to Singapore.
4️. Advanced filter
The advanced filter allows the user to input the information that they need to see or filter down to, with the option of adding conditions such as equals, contains, starts with, regex, and in. It works in a similar way to an input box with the added condition.
For example, we created an advanced filter with the dimension Country and input contains United as the condition. This will filter the data to all countries that contain the keyword "United", displaying data from the United States, United Arab Emirates, and the United Kingdom.
As a tip, we recommend adding the following filters for your Looker Studio report: Channel, Location, Device Category, and Date Range Control. This will allow you to layer the filters and narrow the report down to find very specific information. For example, you can filter the report to organic traffic in India coming from mobile traffic from date x to date y.
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