Option to hide fields within Kibana

[blfrantz]

Kibana version: 6.2.2

Describe the feature:
In Kibana, new fields don't appear in Discover, etc. until the field list for a particular Index Pattern is refreshed. This suggests that it's possible for a field to exist in the ES index/mapping, but not appear in Kibana. I'd like to take advantage of this fact to be able to "hide" certain fields from the Kibana interface without modifying the underlying ES mapping or objects. This is primarily to tailor the Kibana interface to remove fields that aren't relevant to my target audience. I would want this to remove the field from both the object detail view in Discover as well as the list of fields wherever those appear in the UI. Ideally it'd also remove it from the fields being searched (since it'd be confusing to get matches on a field you can't see), but I don't consider this a requirement if it's difficult... perhaps a "show hidden" toggle could be provided in Discover to make it possible to see these "hidden" matches.

I can envision this being a "hidden" toggle alongside the "format" setting when editing a field in the Index Pattern interface. Ideally not just a "remove" option since presumably that'd get wiped out whenever the list is refreshed again.

For a bit more context, we have multiple indexes in our ES cluster which are relevant to different groups of users. To make things simple for our users, I like to spin up different Kibana instances with their own .kibana-* indexes which I then configure for each type of user. This also provides easy partitioning of Saved Objects to keep that list organized. This request takes that a step further by giving me the ability to configure what fields these users see, since in many cases a lot of the fields are only useful for "internal" or troubleshooting purposes (including the _* fields, but not limited to those).

[chrisronline]

Have you seen the Source filters option inside the index pattern page? That should hide fields from other areas of Kibana

[trevan]

@chrisronline, that just hides them from the Discover view. It doesn't hide them from the list in visualization.

[chrisronline]

@trevan Ah, okay. In that case, this request makes sense and sounds like a good idea!

[blfrantz]

@chrisronline Thanks! I was not aware that's what that tab was for. It does partially address my request, though as @trevan points out, not entirely. In addition to not applying to field drop-downs in Visualize or the Add a filter dialog, it also doesn't seem to work for the _* built-in fields (which I guess makes sense for _source, but not the others).

For my purposes it is still helpful, though, so thanks for the heads-up. And since it supports wildcards, I think I prefer this way of configuring the setting to what I suggested. So maybe this request is really to just make source filters apply to field drop-downs and built-in _* fields. It also might be a good idea to rename the tab to field filters or something to make it a bit more obvious what it does.

[biji-padhy]

Hi guys,

I have created a restricted user role that grants access to all other fields except few mentioned fields. It hides the fields from the discover tab, however this field is available in all dashboards and visualizations. How can we restrict the user to view the fields in visualizations as well?

[ghost]

Hi, I have a similar requirement to hider certain fields , based on user role, from all dashboards and visualizations. How do I achieve this?

[Ranakel]

+1

[RonnieDilli]

+1

[salonibhogale]

+1

[StephyJacob]

+1

[elasticmachine]

Pinging @elastic/kibana-app-arch (Team:AppArch)

[davebarda]

+1

[gimmic]

user-specific field cosmetic hiding would be useful for analysts.

[mattkime]

Quite a bit has changed since this issue was created.

To make things simple for our users, I like to spin up different Kibana instances with their own .kibana-* indexes which I then configure for each type of user.

We now have Spaces - https://www.elastic.co/guide/en/kibana/master/xpack-spaces.html which allow you to do this within a single instance of kibana.

Additionally, since we removed the field cache in 7.11 - #82223, you can now use field level security to determine which fields a user sees - https://www.elastic.co/guide/en/elasticsearch/reference/current/field-level-security.html

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Given those two significant changes, is there still a reason to keep this issue open?