QuickSight bookmark does not retain ad-hoc visual filters — expected behaviour or workaround?

Q&A
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Hi everyone,

I’m seeing a difference in behaviour when creating bookmarks in an Amazon QuickSight dashboard:

  • If I apply a filter using a dashboard filter control, the selected value is correctly saved and restored in the bookmark.
  • However, if I apply an ad-hoc filter directly on a visual (for example via right-click or the visual filter menu) and then create a bookmark, that filter is not retained when reopening the bookmark.

I’d like to confirm:

  1. Is this the expected behaviour in QuickSight bookmarks?
  2. Are only filter controls and parameter values supported for bookmark persistence?
  3. Is there any recommended workaround or best practice to persist ad-hoc visual filters within bookmarks?

Thanks in advance for your guidance.

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Hi @Prav,
Yes, this is expected behavior. To my understanding, when using a control to handle the filtering, the value(s) selected in the control are essentially added to your dashboard’s url. Since bookmarks simply save the dashboard’s url, it holds on to those values that get set and added to the url.
Where as with ad-hoc filtering, the filtering logic applied does not get added anywhere with the url so these selections do not get saved.

Another Community user recently brought this to attention as well and said they had created a support ticket regarding this. The response they received confirmed that ad-hoc filters were not included in bookmarking.

Yes, controls (whether they be through a custom filter or a parameter) are the only ways to save filtered selections through bookmarking.

The best work around that can be utilized is through the use of parameters as you noted.

I’ll leave this marked as a feature request to promote visibility to the support team regarding the option for ad-hoc filters to be saved through bookmarks.

Thank you

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