Persistent Top Values Selection Popup in Discover

[Cris-Maggi]

Describe the feature:
In Kibana up to version 8.4.3, when a user selects a top value from the field sidebar in Discover, the popup box displaying the top values remains open, allowing the user to make multiple selections while the Discover panel refreshes to show the selected top values. This behavior is beneficial for users who wish to apply multiple filters quickly without reopening the top values popup for each selection.

However, in later versions of Kibana (e.g., 8.5 and above), the behavior has changed. Now, when a user selects a top value, the popup box automatically closes, and the user must reselect the field to open the top values popup again for each additional filter they want to apply. This change in behavior disrupts the workflow and increases the number of interactions required to apply multiple filters, leading to a less efficient user experience.

Describe a specific use case for the feature:

We request an enhancement to the Discover feature that allows the top values popup box to remain open after a user selects a top value. This would enable users to apply multiple filters (both inclusion and exclusion) without the need to reopen the popup box for each selection. The popup should only close when the user clicks outside of it or explicitly closes it.

This enhancement would streamline the filtering process in Discover, reduce the number of clicks, and improve the overall efficiency of data exploration within Kibana.

• After selecting a top value in the Discover field sidebar, the top values popup should remain open.
• Users should be able to apply multiple inclusion and exclusion filters from the top values popup without reopening it.
• The popup should close when the user clicks outside of it or closes it explicitly.
• The Discover panel should refresh to reflect the applied filters after each selection, while keeping the popup open.

Impact:
This enhancement would positively impact all users who rely on Discover for data exploration and analysis, as it would reduce the time and effort required to apply multiple filters to their searches. It would reinstate a user-friendly feature from previous versions of Kibana, aligning with user expectations and improving overall satisfaction with the Discover tool.

[elasticmachine]

Pinging @elastic/kibana-data-discovery (Team:DataDiscovery)

[kertal]

thx for opening this issue. I've got a question about

We request an enhancement to the Discover feature that allows the top values popup box to remain open after a user selects a top value. This would enable users to apply multiple filters (both inclusion and exclusion) without the need to reopen the popup box for each selection.

when select a value of the popup box, a filter is applied, with this filter also the values displayed in the popover would change, since those are also retrieved using the current query + filter. In this case, just the filtered value would remain, so users could change from e.g. inclusion to exclusion or vice versa.

For me it sounds the ask is to not update the Top values even when the result changes, because this would allow to filter by different values than the previous filter?

[Cris-Maggi]

Hey @kertal
Thanks for replying back.

I believe on the short answer here (maybe I didn't expressed myself correctly), is to just keep the pop up of the top values open during the add(+)/remove(-) remove filter. Up to version 8.4.3 it was like this, adding a filter of the let's say top ip would refresh the background showing only the data of the ip selected, while keeping the pop up open, so it was faster to just remove the filter and select another IP for example.
Now, when you add the top IP the pop up closes while doing the refresh on discover, to remove the ip in question and select another one, you have to go to the menu on the left, select the field and remove the filter causing the user to do a few more clicks than it was up to 8.4.3.

Let me know if that's more clear and if you have any other questions.

[kertal]

yes, thx, so this was the old behavior

Kapture.2024-09-05.at.08.17.36.mp4

Now the popover is closed, so users can't select other filters, it works like Lens did, because wie unified those field lists

Kapture.2024-09-05.at.08.22.28.mp4

FYI @ninoslavmiskovic

[kertal]

Closing this because it's not planned to be resolved in the foreseeable future. It will be tracked in our Icebox and will be re-opened if our priorities change. Feel free to re-open if you think it should be melted sooner.