Table of Contents
Sidebar filters
28. May 2026
Table of Contents
Filters (sometimes called “facets”) are used to refine Content Items in the Content Browser or List Items in the List Browser. Those filters are shown on the right (sidebar) and help refine your search for content; e.g., the Media type filter lets you filter for all content tagged with a media type, and the Department filter lets you filter for content tagged with a department. The filter can use all indexed information saved in the metadata or virtual content. You can only configure filters if you are familiar with the field types and the supported Filter Types. Filters are available in Content Browser, List Item Browser, Collections (not editable), Shares (not editable), Users (not editable), and Notifications (not editable). Fotoware Alto offers an editor for configuration.
The technical term for this kind of filter is Aggregation.
Create filters in the sidebar
The filter editor is available for creating filters in the Content Browser and the List Browser. Those are the filters you see on the right available for users to filter for items. What you technically create here are aggregations, as you aggregate the values of a field into different clickable filters.
Example for Tagbox using the ID of the Tag and changing the field to search for in the Filters:
- Open the settings of the List or the Channel.
- Open the Filters.
- Content Browser Filters in Channel settings.
- Filters in List settings.
- Press "Add" to add a new filter.
- Select the field (shown as field path), audit information, or broken references.
- Use IDs. Depending on the field used for the filter, the analyzed version will be used: this means that suggestions have an insensitive casing search and a "like " autocompletion behavior, roughly implemented. wherever possible, as those are unique (_refId for Tagbox).
- Fields already available as filters are still shown here; you have multiple filters on the same field.
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Update the settings.
- Change name.
- Change search field (specifically for tagboxes).
- Save and test.
Filters require values in fields that must have "Include in filters" configured. However, you cannot add a relationship, fieldset, or geo point fields directly to the Channel or List Filters. You can add the fields used in the underlying relationship or fieldset, provided they are not non-supported fields.
Search in filters
Search functionality within filter values can propose "suggestions" for the possible values. These search fields are used for search suggestions in the Content Browser and List Item Browser. Depending on the field used for the filter, the analyzed version will be used: this means that suggestions have insensitive casing search and a "like autocompletion" behavior roughly implemented.
Each Filter can have one or more search fields for filter sort order when editing it; search in the Filter settings.
Reorder filters in the sidebar
You can change the sort order of the filters when editing the filters.
Reorder filter items in a filter
For each configured filter, you can find the sort field, where you can select whether to sort by item count (the default) or alphabetically, in ascending or descending order. If you choose alphabetically, you get another selection for the field value on which to sort alphabetically. Sorting by item count does not offer a sort field because the order is based on the number of items returned by that filter. That means that the filter that finds the most items is at the top.
Sorting is supported for text values from text fields and tagboxes, DateTime values, Checkboxes, and Numbers.
For Tagboxes created based on _refId, the Name Pattern is shown in the Filters. Fotoware Alto sorts tagbox values by Name Pattern, which must be set to “available in filters” for the field on the Layer.
