Introduction
Associative filters allow users to ask new and more advanced business questions that use the association between different entities in the data.
Here are some examples of business questions:
Find the customers who bought Product A and not Product B
Find products that were sold this month in store A or sold last month in store B
Find employees who know how to code both in Python and SQL
When an associative filter is applied, the user can still see all the information about the filtered population, unlike regular filters that reduce the information to the specific question asked.
Associative filters allow users to ask advanced business questions intuitively.
Users can easily edit the filter and save them for repeated usage.
How to apply an associative filter
Associative filters are accessed from the filter button in the filter bar.
In the dialog, a user can add as many rules for the filter as needed,
The relationship between the rules is defined as either:
Intersection- only entities that fulfill the two rules will be included in the result
Union- entities that fulfill one of the rules are included in the result
An Associative filter can be edited by clicking on the filter in the filter bar and then editing the rules.
Associative Filter Example
The image below shows an associative filter that will result in all customers buying something from the bikes category and nothing from the other categories.
The image below shows customers who bought something in 2025 or
bought products with red or white colors in the Pacific region.
The image below shows the products bought by male customers in Germany
And weren't sold before 2024 in the European Region
Associative filter other use cases
Associative filters are helpful in these scenarios:
Large data sets- associative filters aren't limited to the number of entities they can filter because they use a subquery to filter the data.
Dynamic Filters—Associative filters store the filter definitions rather than the results. Therefore, applying an associative filter automatically refreshes the outcomes after an update to the data.
Known Limitations
Only one associative filter can be applied at a time.
Fields from Fact tables can't be used in Associative filters.
This means that in the image below, when filtering the customer table fields from these tables can be used
Associative filters don't support result filters.