Possibility to hide multi fields in a document (discover) - 7.12

[oakh1]

I can't find the setting to hide "Multi fields" in a document when u are in discover part of Kibana 7.12. Have I missed something or is it possible to hide this? Having the multi fields shown at all times makes it really hard to read the document as it's 66% overhead. Since 99% of the times, the multi fields looks the same as the normal fields, it seems somewhat waste.

This wasn't the case in Kibana 6.8(?), but maybe I have enabled something or so?

[elasticmachine]

Pinging @elastic/kibana-app (Team:KibanaApp)

[flash1293]

Totally agree with this, IMHO it should be an advanced setting defaulting to off - it's a rare edge case to look at different multi field values. What do you think @kertal ?

[wylieconlon]

In most cases the values are identical, but I think it's important to highlight when they are not identical because that reflects a few potential issues:

• Documents are manually updated without refreshing the index
• The field is not not indexed
• There is a character limit that prevents the full text from being searchable

[oakh1]

Agreed that that there should be some kind of "highlighting" when the values aren't the same, but I guess that should be some kind of a toggle button to "show hidden fields".

I'm glad you agree on that this should be fixed though, as this (honestly) pretty much ruins the discover experience (and in our way of working it's the most used part of Kibana).

Looking forward for it to "go back" as it was before in previous versions (but with the added notification where the fields differ)

Thanks guys!

[kertal]

Totally agree with this, IMHO it should be an advanced setting defaulting to off - it's a rare edge case to look at different multi field values. What do you think @kertal ?

I do agree that this needs to be customizable by the user, there are use cases when displaying multi fields are useful. So the user should be able to display or hide them. I think a default in Advanced settings to generally show/hide multi fields + the possibility for users to chose their own setting when viewing the doc view would be preferable

[sejbot]

I agree that this needs to be fixed. A toggle in Advanced Settings sounds like a good idea.

As a workaround at the moment, you can enable "Read fields from _source" in Kibana Advanced Settings. This will make the multi fields go away.

[ghudgins]

here's a suggestion from an ER

we're wondering if you could add the ability to have it collapse by default, and have expand/collapse button for the multi-fields (for each multi-field, and/or for all multi-fields in the entire document), since it often clutters our view because for many of our fields, we have several multi-fields, making us scroll a lot to see all fields.

[JBodkin-LH]

I'm finding the new UI more difficult to use, as I would normally skim read to find the field I'm interested in. It would be good to either hide the additional fields, or find a different way in the UI to present the fields

[ehausig]

@JBodkin-LH I agree. I think having "Multi fields" annotations staggered interrupts the visual flow. (This is especially annoying with documents containing many fields.)

I think that change combined with the "field button cluster" being aligned way off to the right has made it more difficult to quickly add filters or build-out a list of columns. (I'd much prefer to have the buttons located in a fixed position to the left of each field name. It would be must less mouse movement, especially on a widescreen monitor with the browser maximized. ;)

[braddeicide]

The switch from a list of key:values to a list of key:blob that represents a value is a very big problem for usability and I'm surprised this wasn't closed in time for 7.13. We want to convince developers to use the discover interface but it's now far harder to read and a harder sell compared to the old solution. I've switched to reading the Json view. We're staying on 7.11 until this is fixed and redeploying the cluster that was upgraded (fun).

[thekofimensah]

I also will add that the UX of this feature is quite bad. I can't stand looking at the discover tab anymore and any visual that uses it, I must change now.

[jthack]

100% agree with @thekofimensah. As a daily user of kibana, it makes the discover page so difficult to visually parse.

[ppf2]

For those looking for a quick U/X workaround, please see the workaround proposed here.

[timroes]

Closed via #101929