Saved search columns reset when filtering?

Elastic Stack Kibana
#1

Hi,

We're on version 7.8.1 of the stack.

I noticed an annoyance. I have a dashboard with a saved search at the bottom. I add/remove columns, change the order, etc, and when I filter by a value, the columns reset! It wasn't like that before.

Is it by design? Or a known issue? Oddly, I couldn't find anyone complaining on this..

Is this behaviour configurable? Or perhaps fixed in a latest version?

Thanks,

Tal

#2

This sounds like a bug, possibly the same as this: it appears not to have received attention recently. https://github.com/elastic/kibana/issues/62892

#3

Thanks for the reply @wylie, but actually I don't see the connection, there the filters come back, in my case the columns come back when filtering.

BTW, I mistyped before, I set the title as "Saved search columns reset when editing?", but I meant "Saved search columns reset when filtering?"

#4

Got it. I've taken a closer look at what's happening based on your description, and I no longer think this is a bug- but I agree that it's annoying behavior, and I think you should open a feature request on the Kibana repo for this. The reason is that all of the changes you're making from the dashboard are temporary, and the saved search gets reloaded when you add filters, which clears the temporary changes. I think the options are basically these for how we could improve this:

  1. Disable edits to saved searches on dashboards. Simple but maybe too limited.
  2. Auto-save the edits. This can cause problems when dealing with multiple users.
  3. Disable the "delete column" option in dashboard. Auto-save the rest, which are safe for multiple users.
  4. Provide a dirty state which indicates that there are unsaved changes, and warn before reloading.

My preference here is option 3: what do you think?

Also, for opening a Github issue: we call this feature the "Saved search embeddable" and it's part of the Discover feature.

#5

Could be related to https://github.com/elastic/kibana/issues/72024

#6

IMHO the bug as described there is actually not a bug but expected behavior. When you are going a change while viewing the dashboard and not editing the saved search, I believe there's no expectations that the change will survive a page refresh.

I think that 3 is not good as delete column might not be available, but what about the sort? adding columns? changing their order?

I believe that the best solution is to have the change survive a reload of data and filter changes etc. And only get lost after a full page refresh or even moving away from this dashboard. I believe that permanent changes should only be when editing the saved search.

The only work around right now is constantly editing the saved search to show other columns?

#7

We don't currently have a middle ground between "permanently changes" and "temporary changes", which is why I didn't list any options like the one you're asking for. It seems like you would actually prefer option 2: auto-save all changes from the dashboard, so that any user with access to the dashboard can modify the saved search.l

#8

I think that optimally other users should not be affected, for example, by setting the new columns configuration in local storage, per each changed saved search, with the ability to revert back to "factory settings".

But I'm really surprised that there's no way to retain such information "in session", for example, like I am able to fold the legend, and it doesn't return when updating the data or changing filters.