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Using the card filter sidebar control

The card filter is one of the most important ways to get to the cards you are looking for in Mingle. It has a few moving parts which can be used in ways ranging from easy and simple to extremely powerful as your familiarity with the system grows. The filter behavior is governed largely by the various card types and properties that you have created for your project.

There is always at least one filter by default in the filters panel. This first filter is set by default to filter by card type with an initial value of (any) - meaning that you will see all card types in the view. This filter cannot be removed, however you can change the card type to a value other than (any), or add additional card type filters.

Once you've filtered the cards you want to view, you can save these filters as a favorite for quick reference in the Favorites... sidebar control. (Once you've made a view into a Favorite - you can create a tab for it).

Quick start to filtering

This section gives a quick overview of how to use the Filter list by... sidebar control to control which cards are displayed in a list. For more in-depth information about how filters work, take a look at the following sections.

  1. Click on the Filter list by... link to open the control (usually it will be open by default when it's available). The Filter list by... is available from any list or grid view.

    Filter list by sidebar control

    You'll see that one filter condition is already set: Type is (any). This default condition cannot be removed, although you can change the value from (any) to one of the available card types. This is because card type determines what properties are available for further conditions. With the default of Type is (any), all card types will be shown in the view, and only properties which are shared by all card types can be used in setting additional filter conditions.

    For example, if you have two card types in your project: Story, which has properties (Type, Status, Priority); and Risk which has properties (Type, Status, Impact, Owner).

    • With the default filter condition Type is (any), when you attempted to add a second condition the only properties you would be able to select are (Type, Status) because they are the only properties which are common to all card types.
    • If you were to change the filter condition to be Type is Story, then your choice of properties for further conditions would be (Type, Status, Priority).

  2. To quickly restrict the type of cards displayed, change the value in the default condition from (any) to a specific card type.

  3. To add a new filter condition, click on the Add a filter link. A new row will be inserted into the filter control.

    New filter condition

  4. Choose a property by clicking on the (select...) link. You will be able to choose any property which is common to all of the card types currently selected.

    If the property you want to filter on is not showing up, you may need to restrict the card types to ones which have that property

  5. Choose a comparison operator by clicking on the is link. The options available will depend on what is applicable to the property you selected in the step above.

    Full list of comparison operators
    • is - the default operator; will restrict the property to only the value specified.
    • is not - will restrict the property to only values other than the one specified.
    • is less than - shown when the property is ordered. Will restrict the property to values which are strictly less than the specified value. Does not include cards having the property value equal to the specified value.
    • is greater than - shown when the property is ordered. Will restrict the property to values which are strictly greater than the specified value. Does not include cards having the property value equal to the specified value.
    • is before - shown when the property is a date, equivalent to is less than. Does not include cards having the property value equal to the specified date.
    • is after - shown when the property is a date, equivalent to is greater than. Does not include cards having the property value equal to the specified date.

    • Properties can have a natural order, such as numbers or dates - in this case that natural ordering is used to resolve 'is less/greater than' conditions.
    • Enumerated properties, where the allowable values are specified in a list - use the sort order of the list to resolve 'is less/greater than' conditions.

  6. Choose a value by clicking on the (any) link. The options available will depend on what is applicable to the property you selected in the step above.

    There are several special values which can appear here:
    • (any) - Specifies cards having any value for the selected property. Available for operators is and is not.This is the same as having no condition for the property at all.
    • (not set) - Specifies cards which have no value set for the property. Available for operators is and is not. This is analogous to the 'null' term in SQL. It is not available for mandatory Mingle card properties such as Type.
    • (current user) - Specifies cards which have the currently logged in user assigned to the selected property. Available for operators is and is not. Available for properties which take Mingle users as values.
    • (today) - Specifies cards which have the current date assigned to the selected property. Available for operators is, is not, is before, is after. Available for date properties.

    The available values depend on the data type of the property you selected
    • if you selected the Type property, then you will be presented with the list of all card types and the special value (any).
    • if you selected a Managed List property, then you will be presented with the list of all values that have been specified in the managed list and the special values (any), (not set).
    • if you selected a Date, then you will be presented with a calendar widget that will allow you to select a date, as well as the special values (any), (not set) and (today).
    • if you selected a Team member property, then you will be presented with a list of the current team members, as well as the special values (any), (not set) and (current user).

    • If you chose a Relationship property to filter on, then instead of a droplist you will be presented with a popup list of the available cards of that type in the corresponding tree.

      Select filter value for relationship property

    • If the property you selected has any Project variables associated with it, then the names of those project variables will appear in the list of values. For example, a project variable called Current Iteration would appear as (Current Iteration).
  7. Your new filter condition will be applied as soon as you've selected a value, and you should see the results reflected in the cards displayed in the view.

  8. To remove a filter condition, simply click on the Delete filter condition button next to the condition you want to remove. Again, the effect of removing the condition will immediately be reflected in the view.

    You can't remove the first filter condition, there must always be at least one condition on the Type property.

  9. Select one or more tags to include in the filter conditions, by clicking on the Add tags link. Mingle will display an edit box which will allow you to enter one or more tags (separate multiple tags with commas). Click the Add tags to apply your tag list to the filter. Only cards which are tagged with all of the tags you enter here will be displayed.

  10. To remove a tag from the filter, click on the Edit tags and then click on the Remove tag from filter button. Mingle will remove that tag from the filter and refresh the display.

  11. If no cards match the criteria, you will see the following message displayed at the top of the screen.

    There are no cards that match the current filters message

    To resolve this, you can either:

    • Remove one or more filter conditions or tags from the filter.
    • Click on the Reset filter link in the message to reset the filter to the defaults.

How filtering works

How card types affect filtering options

Selecting one or more card types restricts the properties available for filtering to those which are common to all of the selected card types. With the default of "Type is (any)", all card types will be shown in the view, and only properties which are shared by all card types can be used in setting additional filter condition.

The (any) special value is overruled by any other conditions on the property, so for example if you start with "Type is (any)", and then add a condition "Type is story" then you will only see cards of type story displayed.

Filter property options restricted to those shared by all card types

Filtering on multiple values for the same property using the IS operator

When you add more than one filter condition for a property, cards which satisfy any of the conditions are shown. (In other words, multiple conditions for a single property are OR'ed together). So for example, if you selected to filter on "Size is large, Size is medium" then both large and medium sized cards would be displayed .

Multiple filter conditions for one property

Filtering on multiple values for the same property using other operators

When two conditions that return multiple possible values are specified for a single property, they are AND'ed. For example "Size less than 10", "Size greater than 2" will result in all cards which have a Size greater than 2 and a Size less than 10 being displayed. However, when the conditions are mutually exclusive they are OR'ed together: "Size less than 10", "Size is 15" will result in all cards which have a Size less than 10 or a Size of 15 being displayed.

Greater than and Less than conditions on a single property

Filtering on more than one property

When you add filter conditions for more than one property, cards which satisfy all of the conditions are shown. (In other words, conditions for different properties are AND'ed together). So for example, if you selected to filter on "Size is 'large', Status is 'open'" then only cards having size 'large' and status 'open' would be displayed.

Filtering on multiple properties

Filtering on multiple values and multiple properties

When you add more than one condition for a property, and also add conditions on other properties, Mingle uses a simple and intuitive precedence rule to evaluate which cards to display. Mingle will display cards which meet at least one of the conditions, for each of the properties specified. (You can describe this as the OR operator taking precedence over the AND operator, in a similar way to the precedence of multiplication over addition in arithmetic).

If this explanation isn't helping, then we suggest you have a play with the filter control, as in practice it's much easier to use than explain, and you'll find that in most cases the results are what you would have expected.

If you wanted to view all stories and defects which have a status of open or new, and are assigned to iteration 5 or a later iteration:

  • First add two conditions on Type; Type is 'story', Type is 'defect'
  • then, add two conditions on Status; Status is 'open', Status is 'new'
  • then, add two conditions on Iteration; Iteration is '5', Iteration greater than '5'

Mingle will first find all cards which have Type set to 'story' or 'defect'. It will then exclude any of the results which do not have a status of 'open' or 'new'. Finally it will exclude any of the results which do not have iteration of 5 or above.

Filtering on multiple values for multiple properties

Filter conditions using (any)

The special value (any) means "no filter" rather than "any one of the possible values". So if you have conditions of status is (any), status is 'open'; then the first condition has no effect and you will only see cards which match the second condition. Likewise "is not (any)" has no effect.

Filtering when a Card tree is selected

When a Card tree is selected, only cards which are currently members of that card tree will be displayed. Any additional filter conditions will further restrict the cards displayed. So if you think that you should be seeing more cards from your filter conditions, check to see if you've got a card tree selected.