I've thought about this in the past (and made it work) but at the end of the day, it just doesn't make sense with IG and IR – unless you lock down all the features of those region report types (disable add/removing columns, hiding, etc) which ends up being a CR anyway… FWIW, the trick I used was to add a FS with CR on the page, hide the CR, and use the FS page items in the where clause of the SQL query on the IG/IR in question..

Jayson,

I probably don't understand how the Faceted Search refreshes the Classic Report enough to understand why you would need to lock down all the features of your IG. 

I'm trying to do something very similar providing a region of “Easy Filter” page items that addFilters to the IG and I only turned off the users' ability to Filter. I'm also using CSS to hide the current Filters region, so the user can't edit them from there (and be out of sync with my Easy Filters.

I'm pretty close to having it all working, including restoring saved reports, though a) It hasn't been easy (because of my limited JS knowledge) and b) I haven't done exhaustive testing yet.

I'm guessing it's an issue with the Faceted Search items?

Think about the IR and IG - by default, columns can be removed from the report - how does that make sense if there is (or easily could be) a facet defined still?

Why shouldn't I be able to filter on a column, just because the user doesn't want that column visible? Are you saying that facets can only be defined for visible columns (or am I missing your point)?

I have only played with faceted reports for demo purposes, so I haven't thought about how they work that much. That's because our users want IR/IG report features (especially hide/show columns).

no i'm not saying that - it would be a strange UX for that to be the way it worked

I guess we'll agree do disagree on that. 

Our lead stakeholder specifically said they wouldn't have a problem filtering on a field that wasn't visible in the report. She's not a UX expert, but she's a VP here, so that's good enough for me. ;-)

Thanks for the feedback

Hi Stew,

The topic of how we can get Faceted Search / Smart Filters to work with Interactive Reports / Interactive Grids has been discussed a few times internally within the team. 

It comes down to how IRR/IGs provide their own handling for filtering, sorting, and search (among other things) when compared to Faceted Search and Smart Filters, which provide this capability for target region. 

The same applies for Order By Page Item feature, which works for most components, except for IRR/IG as they handle sorting for you. Unfortunately, it is quite complex to keep filters/search/sorting.. in sync with Faceted Search and IRR/IG regions.

I agree this would be a very cool feature, but there are sizable technical and UX implications we need to address to get this to work correctly.

Re: Filtering on hidden fields
While, we tend to filter on fields that are visible, filtering on fields that are hidden is totally normal, especially depending on the use case. For example, when you're searching for hotels, you may want to filter by amenities (e.g. free breakfast or airport shuttle) that may not be displayed in the results. 

Thanks for sharing your idea, and please do continue to participate in the Ideas app!

Shakeeb

Shakeeb and Jayson,

I'm sure the team has consumed many adult beverages over many evenings discussing this topic!

Thanks for taking the time to clue me in a little. 

Having tried to implement my highly-simplified version without Faceted Search/Smart Filters, I can readily understand that integrating them with the power of IGs would be extremely complex.

Your example of filtering on hidden columns is a perfect example of why it's needed sometimes.

My thanks to the entire Apex team for all their hard work. While we may not always comprehend it, we appreciate it!

Stew

I’ve supported this because my organisation does use IGs with the action bar turned off in 99% of cases. We don’t believe that the affordances of the IG action bar are clear enough for our average users. So we are building something akin to search bars or facets  ourselves. We’d rather be spending our time doing cooler things that deliver more benefit. We never used Query By Example on forms apps back in the days of yore, for similar reasons. The obvious alternative I suppose is to give us , declarative, control over the UI of the various actions and sub parts of the IG actions. The JS method is distinctly painful and unAPEX and you are still limited to the actions living within the IG region bar. Maybe there is a separate idea for that.

Having  the ability to search efficiently using faceted search on Interactive Reports (IR) would be the icing on the cake. This enhancement would significantly improve the overall usability of the application. Users are consistently requesting quick search filters, along with sorting and hiding features in IR. Despite the high demand for these functionalities, we currently face challenges in implementing them.