Now in Amazon Quick Sight Q&A: Ask about, include, or exclude NULL values

[Jiahuan_Li]

TL;DR: We launched new NULL-aware capabilities in Quick Sight Q&A - so you can ask questions that filter on NULL/not-NULL in natural language, set Topic filters to include or exclude NULL-only rows, and use chart actions to focus on or exclude NULLs right from your Q&A results.

What’s new (at a glance)

• Quick Sight Q&A now interprets NULL as a filter condition. You can now:

  • Ask NULL-conditioned questions in both Topic Q&A and Dashboard Q&A (e.g., “which interns have no manager assigned?” or “bugs where due date is NULL”)

  • Add NULL-related context in your Topic’s custom instructions and field/column descriptions.

  • Use NULL-conditioned instructions while building visuals.

• Topic filters for NULL-only / non-NULL-only. In your Topic, you can add filters with Include nulls only or Exclude nulls only for a chosen field - so your questions automatically respect that context.

• One-click chart actions. From a Q&A visualization, choose Focus only on null or Exclude null to quickly refine results without rewriting your question.

How to access & use these features

1. Open the Quick Sight Console

Asking Questions on NULL values in Amazon Quick Sight Q&A

1. Navigate to your chosen Q&A

2. Ask question related to NULL

   Question explicitly including nulls

   Question explicitly excluding nulls

Adding Filter to Include/Exclude Nulls

1. In the topic, choose the Data tab

2. for Actions, choose the Add Filter

3. In the Filter configuration page that opens, do the following:

   1. For Name, enter a friendly name for the filter.

   2. For Dataset, choose a dataset that you want to apply the filter to.

   3. For Field, choose the field that you want to filter.

   4. For Null Option, Choose one of the dropdown options

      1. No null option selected - No option is selected to filter nulls.

      2. Include nulls only - Filter for only nulls on the field selected.

         

         

      3. Exclude nulls only - Filter for only non nulls on the field selected

         
         

   5. (Optional) To specify when the filter is applied, choose Apply the filter anytime the dataset is used, and then choose one of the following:

      1. Apply always – When you choose this option, the filter is applied whenever any column from the dataset you specified is linked to a question.

      2. Apply always, unless a question results in an explicit filter from the dataset – When you choose this option, the filter is applied whenever any column from the dataset you specified is linked to a question. However, if the question mentions an explicit filter on the same field, the filter isn’t applied.

   6. When finished, choose Save.

The filter is added to the list of fields in the topic. You can edit the description for it or adjust when the filter is applied.

Chart Actions to focus only on/Exclude Nulls

Once the visualization are generated after asking a query in the Quick Sight Q&A bar, you can choose perform chart actions on the charts created such as Focus only on null or Exclude null

Author Restatement to filter for null values

Once the visualization are generated after asking a query in the Quick Sight Q&A bar, you can choose to filter for nulls from Interpreted as edit button.

1. Click on edit button on Interpreted as text

2. Choose the field you want to change filter on

3. Choose Null Options option

4. Choose Include nulls only option to select for null values on the field

   

Example Use Case

Imagine you’re a marketing manager at a streaming service. You have two datasets:

• Marketing Spend and Sign-Ups: Weekly data showing how much was spent and how many new sign-ups resulted.

• Marketing Events: Weekly data showing whether a marketing event took place that week.

These two datasets are joined in Quicksight. Some weeks have marketing events, while others do not. For the weeks without an event, the “Event Week” field is NULL.
With this new feature, Quick Sight Q&A understands NULL values when you ask questions in natural language. This means you can ask questions like:

• “Show me marketing spend with a marketing event.” → Quick Sight Q&A keeps rows where the Event Week field is not NULL.

• “Show me sign‑ups without a marketing event.” → Quick Sight Q&A keeps rows where the Event Week field is NULL.

  

Use filter configuration to include or exclude null only

Because of a recent event partner change, you now spend most of your time looking at weeks that had a marketing event. To make that easier, you can set Q&A’s default view to show only those weeks: add a filter on your Event Week field and choose “Exclude NULL only” (here, NULL means no event). This hides rows without an event.
From then on, when you ask “total sign-ups,” you don’t need to add “with a marketing event”. The filter already focuses on event weeks, saving you extra steps.

If you sometimes want to see performance without a marketing event, enable the behavior “Apply always, unless a question results in an explicit filter from the dataset.” when setting up the filter.
Then asking “total sign-ups without a marketing event” will temporarily focus on the no event (NULL) weeks for that question.

Things to pay attention to

• Empty string ≠ NULL. If you have empty strings and want them treated as NULL, create a calculated field like:
  ifelse({Segment} = "", NULL, {Segment})

• Be deliberate about filter scope. “Apply always” locks in your Topic’s default NULL behavior; the “unless a question results in an explicit filter” option lets specific questions override it when you mention NULL/NOT NULL explicitly.

• If NULL/ not NULL has a specific business meaning that isn’t obvious (e.g., Week is NULL → no event), add a brief note in the description or your custom instructions so Q&A interprets phrases correctly.