Create and Manage Views
Learn how to create and customize views in Layer, apply filters and sorts, save or share views, and generate shared links or embed code for external collaboration.
Zach Soflin
Sep 24, 2024
Create a New View
New views can be created by clicking the arrow next to Select view and + Create a New View as seen below.
You will see options to create any of our 6 different view types, and what the visibility setting will be for each. Visibility settings can be changed later on when you edit your view settings.
Filtering
Individual views can have filtered applied to only show specific elements.
In a view, click on the filter icon in the top right which will open a window that allows for filters to be added
In that window, click on the Add Filter. This will open a blank filter that has an option for what field, the clause, and the value.
Ex: To filter the view to only elements created before January 1st, 2023, this is what it would look like
Field: Created At
Clause: Is Before
Value: 01/01/2023
Sorting
In a view, click on the sort icon in the top right which will open a window that allows for sorting on elements.
In that window, click on the Add Sort. This will open a blank sort that has the option for what field to sort and sort direction.
Ex: To sort by the date the element was created with most recent at the top, this is what it would look like
Field: Created At
Direction: Descending
Saving
Once you have filters or sorts, you can choose to save the view so they will always have those filters or sorts applied.
Once you have a sort or filter created, there will be an option to save the changes in the top of the view. Clicking on the Save Changes will save the changes to the current view.
If you want to duplicate the view with the applied sorts or filters, you can click the dropdown next to the Save Changes button which will open a menu where you can Save Changes, Save as New which will duplicate the view, or Discard Changes which will remove the applied filters or sorts.
Shared Views
Shared views allow someone without a license to see your data.
To share a view first you need to open the share view dialog which can be done two different ways
By clicking on the three dot menu button to the right of the view name on the menu panel on the left side of the page and then clicking Share View
If you already inside the view you want to share, on the top right of the screen you can click the three dot menu button and click the Share View
This will open a new window which gives you the option to create a link to share, add in emails to send the link to others, or embed the view into other pages like Notion for example.
To generate a link to share you can switch the toggle to Share via secret link, a link will be revealed and you are now able to copy the link to pass on. In the future, if you want to control the access, you can either toggle off access to the link, or generate a new link, which will invalidate the previous one.
To share via email, you can enter email addresses into the input under Share With Specific People which will send them an email with a link to the view. After someone’s email has been added, you will be able to see that they were sent an email with the link to that view
To embed a shared view, click the Embed tab and then switch the toggle for Embed Code, a code snippet will appear and you can copy that into a website or document such as notion.