Multi-filters are really useful. But right now their behavior is not intuitive. I expect the filter to show me all the data by default. Only filtering out values when I intentionally select a values in the dropdown. Right now, Redash does this opposite: it shows no data until a filter value is selected.
I propose that a multi-filter should do nothing until the user chooses which values to filter. Or alternatively, allow the user to set and save a default value for a multi-filter in the query editor.
I think it makes most sense to be able to save filter values with the query and/or the dashboard. I just discovered filters and was very excited to use them to speed up some dashboards that are backed by a slow query, until I found out you can’t set default values for them. Making the dashboard users select values every time they load the dashboard isn’t very usable.
Also - it seems the default behavior has changed since this post was created because the filters that I have tried select the first value from the list of possibilities and filter down to that value by default.