We would like to request the ability to customize the default “No data” message displayed in Amazon QuickSight visualizations when no records match the current filters or dataset conditions.
Business Need:
Our organization uses embedded QuickSight dashboards across multiple customers and business domains. The generic “No data” message can often be misleading or unclear to end users because different customers interpret the absence of data differently.
Examples:
“No matching records found”
“No transactions for the selected period”
“No results match the current filters”
“Data is not available for this customer”
Customer-specific localized messages
Currently, all users see the same default “No data” text regardless of the business context, which can lead to confusion and unnecessary support requests.
Requested Enhancement:
Provide a mechanism that allows dashboard authors or embedding applications to customize the message shown when a visual contains no data.
Expected Benefits:
Improved end-user experience.
Reduced confusion when interacting with embedded dashboards.
Better alignment with customer-specific terminology.
Fewer support tickets caused by misunderstanding the generic “No data” message.
Enhanced flexibility for multi-tenant embedded analytics solutions.
Use Case:
We operate a multi-tenant embedded analytics platform powered by Amazon QuickSight. Different customers have different business processes and terminology. A customizable “No data” message would help us provide a more intuitive and customer-friendly experience without requiring workarounds or custom visual replacements.
This feature would be especially valuable for customers using QuickSight Embedded Analytics in multi-tenant environments, where user experience and customer-specific messaging are essential for adoption and usability.
If customization of the default “No data” message is not feasible, we would like to request an alternative capability to automatically hide visuals when no data is returned. Currently, visuals display a generic “No data” message, which can be confusing for end users, particularly in embedded and multi-tenant environments where customers may interpret the message differently. An author-configurable setting such as “Hide visual when empty” would provide a cleaner and more intuitive experience. Ideally, the visual could either be hidden while preserving the layout or optionally allow surrounding visuals to reflow and utilize the available space.
Thanks for the detailed write-up. You are correct that this is a gap and you’re not the first user on the community to bring it up as there’s no native way to customize the “No data” message or automatically hide visuals when they’re empty today.
The closest workaround that exists right now is the Insight (narrative) visual approach. You create an Insight, add a computation using Unique Values or a custom expression with ifelse, and write logic that returns your custom message when the underlying data is null or empty. It won’t replace the “No data” text on a chart or table directly, but in a free-form layout you can overlay or stack it near the original visual to provide context to your readers. There’s a community walkthrough here: Display a custom message on Insights when no data is returned.
For the “hide visual when empty” part of your request, Quick Sight does support conditional rules in free-form layout that can show/hide visuals, but they’re driven by string or number parameter values, not by data presence. So you can’t directly wire up “hide this visual if it returns zero rows.” Some authors approximate this by stacking two visuals (one with data and one with a custom message) and toggling them via navigation actions that set a parameter, but it requires user interaction to trigger the toggle, which likely doesn’t fit your embedded use case.
I will keep the ‘feature-request’ tag attached to this post as that will help increase visibility to the Quick Team.
Thank you for the suggestions. Regarding the use of Insight visuals, unfortunately this does not meet our requirements. Our dashboards rely on a variety of visualization types, including KPI, line charts, bar charts, tables, and other standard QuickSight visuals. The request is specifically focused on the behavior of these visuals when no data is returned, rather than on generating narrative insights. Replacing existing visuals with Insight visuals would not be a viable solution for our use case.
Regarding the recommendation to use parameters and conditional rules to hide visuals, this also does not fully address our requirements. In our embedded environment we do not want users to manually provide or manage parameter values in order to control the visibility of visuals.
In that case there is really nothing else I can think of to suggest as a workaround. The ‘feature-request’ tag is attached to this post which will help increase visibility to the Quick team as I previously stated. I would recommend keeping an eye out for any relevant updates pertaining to this topic on the What’s New page.