SharePoint filters pane updates – filtering and metadata navigation for lists and libraries

[Chris McNulty]

As we continue to update user experiences and customizability in SharePoint document libraries, we are pleased to announce the inclusion of metadata-driven filtering to the filters pane, originally introduced in late 2016. 

The filters pane provides a powerful way to find content in modern lists and libraries. Columns configured in metadata navigation settings will now appear in the filters pane automatically. The pane also uses machine learning to suggest the most likely columns to be used for filtering.

You can also permanently add chosen columns to persist in the filters pane view. Clicking the options menu (“…”) next to the name of each field in the pane, opens a context menu that lets a user pin the field permanently to the filters pane.

The filters pane allows you to filter on one or more column values, and if the column is based on Managed Metadata term hierarchies, you can also filter on parent terms in addition to single terms.

Filters pane with metadata hierarchy

Starting in June, we will roll out the updated filters pane to support metadata navigation in modern lists and libraries.   For more details, please see our help article,  Use filters to change your view of files or list items.

Classic document libraries have used page elements on the left side of each page to enable hierarchical “drill-down” and “Key Filters” on live view of document libraries.  However, the classic metadata navigation elements are incompatible with modern user experiences. The updated filters pane now makes metadata navigation compatible with modern list and document library experiences.

Any metadata navigation configured in classic lists/libraries will be automatically added to the filters pane for modern lists and libraries.

This will unlock modern experiences for thousands of users who were previously restricted to classic experience on these lists and libraries because of the lack of metadata navigation support.  Prior to this change, lists and libraries would automatically fall back to classic mode when this feature was enabled.   Now, these lists and libraries will stay in modern mode and reflect the metadata navigation configuration in the filters pane.    Administrators can choose to remain in classic mode in advance of the rollout by implementing the steps in this support article, Switch the default experience for lists or document libraries from new or classic

We expect to start the rollout of this feature around June 12, 2017.  Please continue to watch the TechCommunity for the latest rollout news.  Thanks.

[EC23]

Hi @Miceile Barrett,

Has the filter search box been removed completely? There used to be a search box that you could use when you filtered by column. The feature seemed to have disappeared on our SharePoint instance on Feb 8th and then reappeared for a day and is gone again. This was a time saver instead of scrolling through a long list of filter options. 

Thanks.

[Deleted]

@Miceile Barrett Any update on the issue with the term sets only being displayed as a list of checkboxes in the filter pane and not as pickers (or the option of pickers)? We are also facing the issue of it not displaying all terms in our large term sets, as mentioned earlier in the thread. We have multiple sites using managed metadata and are in the process of moving all content to SharePoint Online, but this is slowing us down considerably. A custom solution would involve re-implementing a lot of the default document library functionality, which feels like a very unnecessary use of time. Thanks.

[Eric MONASTIRI]

Hello, I am in charge of SharePoint OnLine within a large company, we use massively SharePoint, the problem is that the filters are unusable as soon as the library exceeds several thousand documents, only the classic views meet our expectations (even if they get older).
I do not understand these regressions, modern views seem to be more ergonomic but in reality are much less effective than conventional views on many points.
I hope that SharePoint OnLine teams will think about optimizing these essential functions for a company.
In the meantime, especially, keep the classic views ...

[Deleted]

@Eric MONASTIRI At our company we have managed metadata filters working for a list with over 28k documents. However, since the filter pane only shows them as checkboxes and will not show more than ~120 terms in a vertical listing, we've come up with schemes to group them using powershell. First we export them, then run a grouping script to keep each group less than 120 terms. Then we import the terms. This is still far from ideal, but we've decided to avoid using the  classic experience in SPO for multiple reasons. Also, if you use something like a taxonomy picker control with the SharePoint Framework, you can still search by the children terms and it will suggest/show them with their grouping, so this grouping did not break our use of that control.

Here is what the filter pane on the document library looks like for one of our term sets, which happens to contain numbers that have meaning to our business. We've also done this grouping with words, using alphabetic groupings.

[AlexOsborne]

@EC23did you get anywhere with you query regarding the missing search box in the filters? Recently disappeared for us too - and it was a very helpful feature. Thanks

[Pontus T]

Two years (!) have now passed since this blog post and we are still not seeing custom column filters in the pane (based on Managed Metadata columns). Some libraries occasionally show one of the column (which only has like 10 terms associated with it), but we cannot see any of our nested term set columns. They do, however, show up when clicking on a specific column and selecting "Filter by" (only works in IE as detailed below). Are we doing something wrong here or is this something to open a support ticket about? 

On top of that, the option to click on a column and select "Filter by" does not load on libraries in Edge and Chrome (it stays loading as shown on image below), but it loads in a split second in IE... @Miceile Barrett is this a known issue? I read from a previous post that you had discovered some browser compatibility issues for metadata filters.

Never ending loading

Thanks!

[kpoquette]

I have a user working in a list and she clicked on the filter icon, used the filters, and now she has lost the entire menu bar in the list.  She is an owner of this site.  Any idea how to bring back the menu bar and get rid of the filter pane?

Found a fix!  The expand content button was clicked.  We cleared the cookies from the browser, refreshed the page and the menu is back!

[abrownPEH]

Hi @Chris McNulty @Miceile Barrett,

The metadata columns in the filter pane do not appear to be collapsible however they are in the screenshot in your post. Is this something that has since been removed from the modern UI?

[Jim Wade]

Several years have passed and multiple request for a better way to filter on the column data in the Modern interface have been request in this series of post.  Reading the post its seems I am not the only person who thinks the filtering system in the Classic version is far superior to the Modern interface.  

The Classic interface provides a faster more efficient way of filtering/searching for documents and provides for using synonyms in the filtering/searching. 

Is is just not possible to use the same filtering/searching interface that the Classic version uses in the Modern interface?  

The check box is fine when you only have a few index fields in each column, however, when you have many fields paging through the list  to find the one you are looking for is not productive, heaven forbid if you have multiple users who filter for the same information but call it different names - the reason for the need of synonyms.  

I am still using the Classic version for these reasons, however, it appears that Project Cortex is going to force the move to the Modern interface.  I think Cortex will be a game changer and the vendors in the Intelligent Capture market, e.g., Kofax, PSI, Kodak, EMC, etc. must be concerned.  Isn't it time the filtering method match the capture technology. 

[Markus Hanisch]

The filtering and metadata navigation for lists and libraries does not work as expected.
We have set up hierarchical Managed Metadata columns (2 levels).
When we try to filter the column by means of the column header, it only shows the values available in the list/library. However, it does not show the hierarchy of the metadata. There also no switch/drop down to switch to the "Tree View" available ... so possibility to filter all childs of a certain category at once. 

Furthermore, when we add the managed metadata column to the filter pane, and in the filter pane switch to "Tree view" instead of "List view", we can see the hierarchy of the metadata. However, if we select (=want to filter) the content on a parent term, all the child terms remain unchecked (=the content is not filtered on all the child terms as well, but only filtered by the selected parent term which is not the desired behavior).
I know that this had been working some time ago....
Please support / fix this bug.

Thank you.

Filter Pane > Switch to Tree View & Check Parent Term. Child terms are not checked as well? NOT THE DESIRED BEHAVIOR

[Martin Coupal]

Tree View Filter is not working with FullPath managed metadata attributes. This filter feature has not been tested properly...

[Markus Hanisch]

@Jesper Simonsen@Jesper Simonsen 
I came across this issue recently ...

As a walk around: The sequence of filter actions matters here:

You are forced to first filter by means of the filter pane and then search for a keyword.

Honestly, how to train users to behave that way? :D

[Kim Williams]

Is it possible to filter a currency column similar to a Date column, which a slider?

[Rohit Devmore]

@Chris McNulty   @Miceile Barrett May I know , how sort order of Filter pane values is decided?  I don't see they are alphabetically ordered?

[carmen922]

Hello, 

Does anyone know how to filter records by multiple values in a managed keyword field? For example, records with x AND y instead of x OR y. 

Thanks