Enhanced Dashboard Filtering - Filter by Common Properties Across Multiple Blueprints
E
Eamon Mason
Problem Statement
Currently, Port dashboards require users to manually configure filters with exact property names and values. This creates several challenges:
- Users must understand the underlying data model to create effective filters
- No support for filtering by common properties that exist across multiple blueprints
- Technical workflow not accessible to non-technical stakeholders (managers, executives, product owners)
- Each dashboard requires manual filter setup, reducing reusability
Use Case
As a dashboard consumer (engineering manager, product owner, executive), I want to easily filter dashboard views using simple drop-down selections, so that I can view relevant metrics without needing to understand property names, data models, or filter mechanics.
Example Scenario: A DORA metrics dashboard displays data from multiple blueprint types (repositories, deployments, services, incidents). Users want to filter the entire dashboard by a common organizational dimension (product line, team, business unit) that appears
across all these blueprints.
Current Limitations
- Manual filter addition required for each dashboard
- Users must know exact property names (e.g., "product", "team", "owner")
- Cannot create filters that work across multiple blueprint types
- "Contains" property provides only partial workaround
- Poor user experience for business stakeholders
Desired Solution
- Dashboard-level filters with pre-configured drop-down lists
- Single-click filtering that applies across all widgets in the dashboard
- Cross-blueprint filtering - filter by common properties across different entity types
- No technical knowledge required - intuitive UI for filter selection
- Reusable filter configurations that can be templated across multiple dashboards
Expected Benefits
1. Improved UX - Business stakeholders can self-serve analytics without technical assistance
2. Faster insights - One-click filtering vs. manual configuration
3. Better adoption - Dashboards accessible to broader audience
4. Consistency - Standardized filtering experience across organization
5. Reduced support burden - Less hand-holding required for dashboard consumers
Technical Considerations
- Port currently cannot filter by common properties across different blueprints
- This affects any dashboard showing data from multiple entity types, or a single entity type
- Workarounds exist but compromise user experience
- Feature would enhance Port's value proposition for executive reporting and cross-functional analytics
E
Eamon Mason
Adding some emphasis on a key requirement here: the filters must be definable by the platform team, not canned by the vendor. Every organisation's data model and organisational structure is different, so we need the ability for platform engineers to configure which filter dimensions appear on a dashboard (e.g. Team, Product, Business Unit) and map them to the underlying blueprints/properties -- while presenting a simple dropdown to the end user.
Our non-technical stakeholders are already consuming these dashboards daily and currently depend on platform engineers to pre-filter views for them. Custom widgets alone are not the answer -- this needs to be a first-class, dashboard-level filtering capability that the platform team can define and maintain declaratively.
x
xxx Nimal Sunny
Essentially, please add a support for enum‑based dashboard filters so users get a pre‑defined dropdown instead of building relationship filters manually. This must work across blueprints so as to enable one‑click selection of common dimensions.