Cascading and Relative Filters

On Wednesday 20th May 2026 we made two changes to filters in Analytics. They went out together. This article walks through both.

Cascading filters

Previously, every filter dropdown showed every option available in your data, regardless of what you had already selected in the other filters. That meant you could pick an inspection type that didn't exist in your chosen area, end up with an empty chart, and have to start again.

Cascading filters change that. When you select an option in one filter, the other dropdowns automatically narrow to only show options that have data behind them.

It applies to these filters:

• Site
• Division
• Area
• Inspection type

And it works in either direction. If you start by picking an area, the division and site dropdowns will narrow to show only the matching parents. If you start by picking a site, the division, area and inspection type dropdowns will narrow to show only what sits beneath that site.

A note on "no value"

If your organisation has areas without an allocated division, you'll see a (no value) entry in the Division filter. This isn't a bug. It is a useful prompt that some of your areas don't have a division attached. 

A note on divisional layers

In orgs with multiple divisional layers, the default Division filter only matches areas allocated directly to the selected division, not areas under its sub-divisions. To filter across a whole branch, add a Parent Division dashboard filter that references the parent_division field on the Inspections and Deadlines datasets.

A tidier date filter list

We've reduced the list of date filter options from twelve to seven, based on what people actually use.

The seven options now:

• Last 7 days
• Last 3/6/12 calendar months (previously Last 3/6/12 months. Now aligned to calendar months.)
• Current month
• Last calendar month
• Custom range (includes the Custom relative range option. See below.)

Removed:

• Year to date
• Next 3 months
• Next 6 months

If you previously had a bookmark using one of the removed filters, the date filter in that bookmark has been migrated to the option Last calendar month. The rest of the bookmark is unchanged.

How to create a forward-looking date range

The two "next" options were used very rarely, and you can do everything they did, and more, using Custom relative range.

1. Click the date filter on your dashboard.
2. Choose Custom range.
3. Set the starting point and the duration. For example, Starts: today, Duration: 3 months forward.
4. Apply.

A quick note on bookmarks

Bookmarks are linked to a specific set of filters, so they continue to work. If you had a bookmark using one of the three removed date filters, the date filter has been migrated to Last calendar month automatically. You can rebuild any bookmark at any time using the Custom relative range steps above.