🔐 Who can use this feature?
Survey types: Any
Subscriptions: Any package with Engagement
Filters let you instantly isolate and analyze specific employee segments (such as individual offices, departments, or tenures) across your survey reports. By applying single or multi-layered demographic filters from the top menu, you can cut through broad data to uncover targeted insights while automatically safeguarding individual participant confidentiality.
Apply a filter to your report
Open your survey report and select Filters at the top of the report.
Select Add filter.
Choose what you want to filter by, for example City.
Choose the values you want to see, for example London and New York.
Selecting more than three values shows the first three, followed by a label such as +2 more.
Repeat steps 2 to 4 for any other filters you want.
Your survey has a maximum number of demographic filters, usually five. Once you reach it, the menu shows Maximum number of filters reached and you cannot add another until you remove one.
Select Apply filter.
Your report does not change until you select Apply filter. This means you can set up several filters and apply them in one go.
What you can filter by
Available filters depend on which report you are looking at.
Summary, Insight, Questions, Participation and Heatmap (Standard tab): Leader (on admin and leader-based reports only) and Demographics.
Comments: Demographics. Your administrator nominates one or more demographics for comment filtering, explained in Set Up a Filter for the Comments Report.
Sensitive comments: Demographics, plus a Comment attributes group covering Status, Topic, Keyword, Sentiment and Date submitted.
Check which filters are active
The number on the Filters button tells you how many filters are applied without opening the menu.
ℹ️ Note: The number counts filter types, not values. Three departments plus two locations shows 2, not 5.
Change or remove a filter
Open Filters again, then change any of the following.
Values: select the filter and choose different values.
Filter type: choosing something different to filter by clears the values you had selected for it.
A single filter: select Delete on that filter's row. On wider screens this appears as a close icon rather than a label.
Every filter: select Clear all.
Select Apply filter to update the report.
When confidentiality protection applies
Your survey has a minimum reporting group size for scores and comments, set in Confidentiality Protections in Reporting. This lets you see results for groups while disguising any one individual's responses.
You can select a demographic value that covers fewer responses than that minimum, but selecting Apply filter will not apply it. The whole filter it belongs to is held back, and the filter menu stays open with your selection still in place so you can change it.
Values shown on the filter are marked with an asterisk after the name when they cover too few responses. If a marked value is hidden behind the +2 more label, open the filter to see which one it is.
The filter menu also keeps a confidentiality notice on screen, asking you to choose values with at least your minimum number of responses.
For example, if there is only three responses from the Finance Analytics team and your minimum group size is 5, you cannot apply a filter for Finance Analytics. Choose values covering larger groups, then select Apply filter again.
A value covering a group smaller than the minimum is protected even when the combined results of your whole filter would meet it. This prevents individual results being identified by adding and removing small group filters and watching how the data changes.
If groups in your organization are regularly too small to report on, your survey administrator may need to redo the groupings in your employee data. Merging some smaller groups together can help.
The minimum applies to comment filtering in the same way.
Why the Custom tab has no filters
The Custom tab on the Heatmap report does not offer filters, and the bar says so in place of the Filters button. You build your view by combining demographics into columns instead.
Use these controls on the bar:
Add demographic: adds a demographic as a column.
Sort by: changes the order of your results. Appears once you have selected demographics.
Compared to: changes what your results are measured against. Appears when more than one comparison is available.
Effectiveness (360) reports
Filters on Effectiveness reports sit in a panel at the side of the report rather than in a bar at the top.
Printed and exported reports
Filters you apply still shape the data in a printed page or an exported file. The layout of a printed or exported report is unchanged, so it can look different from what you see on screen.
This is expected, and it does not affect the data you filtered.
➡️ Next steps
Admin Guide to Understanding Survey Results for reading each report once you have filtered it.
Survey Reporting FAQs for common questions about reading your results.
Guide to Report Sharing for who can open a report and when.
💬 Need help? Open a Support Conversation to speak with our Product Support team.