Overview
Filters on the Ideas dashboard let you narrow a view to the subset of ideas you care about. Filters are configured in the filter drawer, persist per view, and apply consistently across the ideas list, expansion counts, and CSV exports.
Canny Ideas is available on Free, Core, Pro, and Business plans. Teams on legacy plans (Starter or Growth) will need to move to new plans to access Ideas.
Adding filters
Open any view and click Filter to open the filter drawer. From there, add filters on any field — status, group, themes, owner, or any custom field. Each filter you add narrows the view to ideas matching the criteria.
Filters are saved with the view, so the next time you open it the same filters apply automatically.
Saving filter changes
By default, views don't autosave filter changes — this lets you apply a temporary filter to explore without changing the view for everyone on your team.
When you change a filter on a view that has autosave off, a popover appears at the bottom-left reading "This view has unsaved changes" with three options:
Save — applies your filter changes to the view for everyone on your team.
Revert — discards your local changes.
Enable Autosave — turns autosave on for this view, so future filter changes save automatically.
You can toggle autosave any time from the view dropdown — click the view name in the top bar and select Enable autosave or Disable autosave. The setting applies to the view for everyone on the team and requires the Manage views permission.
Toggling autosave doesn't save or revert any pending unsaved changes — those still need to be handled from the popover.
Match filters: All vs Any
At the top of the filter drawer, choose how multiple filters combine:
All filters (default) — ideas must match every filter you've added (AND logic).
Any filters — ideas matching at least one of the filters are included (OR logic).
Filter by multiple statuses or groups
The status and group filters are multi-select — you can include or exclude multiple values in a single filter:
Filter by multiple statuses — include ideas that match one or more status types, or exclude ideas that match one or more status types, all within a single filter.
Filter by multiple groups — include ideas from one or more groups, or exclude ideas from one or more groups, in a single filter.
For example, you could include only ideas in the "Open" or "Planned" status types, while excluding ideas in the "Onboarding" or "Beta" groups — all in one view.
Including or excluding sub-ideas
A toggle in the filter drawer — Include sub-ideas that match filters — controls how filters apply to nested ideas:
Toggled on (default): Sub-ideas matching your filters are surfaced, with parent ideas pulled in as intermediaries so you can navigate down to them. Use this when you want to see every matching idea regardless of its position in the hierarchy.
Toggled off: Results are flattened to only ideas whose entire ancestor chain matches the filters. Parents that don't match are excluded, and so are their sub-ideas — even if those sub-ideas match on their own. Use this when you want a strict, top-down filter.
The toggle is saved per view and is honored across the ideas list, sub-idea expansion counts, and CSV exports.
Things to note
Filters are saved per view. Different views can have entirely different filter setups.
CSV exports respect every filter applied to the view, including the sub-ideas toggle.
No action is needed on existing views — they keep their current filter behavior by default.
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