# Populate a dashboard based on Controls dropdown

**URL:** <https://discuss.elastic.co/t/populate-a-dashboard-based-on-controls-dropdown/224386>\
**Category:** Kibana\
**Created:** [March 20, 2020, 9:21am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/populate-a-dashboard-based-on-controls-dropdown/224386 "2020-03-20T09:21:16Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 5\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![grinbin](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/50afbb/32.png) [@grinbin](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/grinbin)\
**Post date:** [March 20, 2020, 9:21am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/populate-a-dashboard-based-on-controls-dropdown/224386/1 "2020-03-20T09:21:16Z")

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I have a simple dashboard with Controls dropdown and a data table visuals. All the data in the data table is shown when the dashboard is loaded. You can filter the data table using the Controls dropdown.

Is it possible to have an empty data table that is then populated by whatever is selected in Controls?

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**Author:** ![lukeelmers](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/elastic/user_avatar/discuss.elastic.co/lukeelmers/32/35230_2.png) [@lukeelmers](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/lukeelmers)\
**Post date:** [March 20, 2020, 7:05pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/populate-a-dashboard-based-on-controls-dropdown/224386/2 "2020-03-20T19:05:12Z")

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Hey @grinbin -

I don't think what you are describing is currently possible. The only hacky workaround I can think of would be to create your dashboard, manually modify the URL to edit the filter being applied to using some bogus value that you know has no results, then save the dashboard.

Then opening the dashboard you would start with zero results, and only retrieve new ones when updating the Controls.

That said, this is of course not a proper solution -- if you are interested, you might consider [creating a feature request](https://github.com/elastic/kibana/issues/new?template=Feature_request.md) on Github, as I don't think I've heard of this particular use case before.

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**Author:** ![grinbin](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/50afbb/32.png) [@grinbin](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/grinbin)\
**Post date:** [March 23, 2020, 9:45am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/populate-a-dashboard-based-on-controls-dropdown/224386/3 "2020-03-23T09:45:12Z")

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Thank you for responding, Luke.

How do I modify the URL to edit the filters?

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**Author:** ![lukeelmers](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/elastic/user_avatar/discuss.elastic.co/lukeelmers/32/35230_2.png) [@lukeelmers](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/lukeelmers)\
**Post date:** [March 24, 2020, 8:59pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/populate-a-dashboard-based-on-controls-dropdown/224386/4 "2020-03-24T20:59:45Z")

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You'd want to apply the relevant filter in the dashboard from your browser, then copy the URL from the browser and do a find-and-replace on the term you are filtering against. Then if you revisit the modified URL in your browser, a different filter will be applied, as much of the Dashboard's state is read out of the URL query string params.

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**Author:** ![system](https://us1.discourse-cdn.com/elastic/original/3X/1/a/1ac57faf039f6b580b3f104ef42a2a89e41014de.png) [@system](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/system)\
**Post date:** [April 21, 2020, 9:03pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/populate-a-dashboard-based-on-controls-dropdown/224386/5 "2020-04-21T21:03:04Z")

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