How to filter for NULL values with a dropdown in Atlassian Analytics

Dag Atle Stentad

Hi Community!

I’m new to Atlassian Analytics and have a few questions I hope you can help me with.

I’ve created a multi-select dropdown controller that shows all teams that have made a delivery. To be able to select “None team selected”, I made two queries and joined them with a left join. I see that I could also do this directly by overriding the SQL, but my custom code disappeared when I switched back to the visual mode, so I did it this way instead. I also added a custom field to get a value where Team ID is null.

Question 1:

Is this the right way to handle a left join without editing the SQL code directly? Are there any better/best practices for doing this?

I have connected the controller to a chart with the filter “Team ID is one of {TEAMDROPDOWN}.”

This works fine for all values except when I try to select “None team selected.” I think this is because it can’t match null with “is one of"?

Question 2:

How can I solve this? In other words, how can I get all values with null when selecting an option in the controller?

Thanks for your help!

Mohsin Shaikh_tyjrji

Hello @Dag Atle Stentad

Hope you are doing well.

I am Mohsin from Atlassian Analytics support. I will assist you with this request.

How to Filter for NULL Values with a Dropdown in Atlassian Analytics:

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1. Is your left join approach in Visual SQL best practice?

Your method—using two queries and a left join in Visual SQL to include a “None team selected” option—is a common workaround, especially since custom SQL edits are lost when switching back to Visual mode. This approach is valid and often necessary when you want to surface NULLs (e.g., teams with no delivery) in a dropdown without writing raw SQL. For more on best practices with dropdown controls and key-value pairs, see:

• Use key-value pairs in a Dropdown

• What is the control editor?

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2. Why can’t you filter for NULL with a dropdown, and how can you work around it?

Currently, dropdown controls in Atlassian Analytics do not natively support filtering for NULL values. When you select “None team selected” (representing NULL), the filter logic uses IN ('null') instead of IS NULL, so it won’t match actual NULLs in your data. This is a known limitation:

Workarounds:

• Custom Field/Label: As you did, add a custom field or formula column that labels NULLs as “None” or similar, and filter on that value instead.

• Manual SQL: If you’re comfortable with SQL mode, you can write a filter like WHERE ("Team ID" = {TEAMDROPDOWN} OR ({TEAMDROPDOWN} = 'None' AND "Team ID" IS NULL)), but note this breaks the link with Visual mode.

• Vote for Improvement: This is a known product gap. If filtering for NULLs is critical for your use case, consider submitting feedback or voting for related feature requests.

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Summary:

• Your left join approach is a valid workaround in Visual SQL.

• Filtering for NULLs with dropdowns is not natively supported; use a custom label or switch to SQL mode for advanced logic.

Hope this helps clarify! If you have further questions. Let us know.