Why does the Azure portal forget my filters and lack basic policy metadata?
Asked by
MistyHarbor42
The Azure portal makes routine review work unnecessarily repetitive. For example, I open the sign-in logs, set the time filter to Local time and Last 7 days, review the results, and close the page. When I return to search the same logs again, the portal has forgotten the filters and I have to configure them all over again. Why aren't these settings persisted?
I also don't understand why Conditional Access policies don't show basic management details such as the creator, the person who last modified the policy, or events showing when the policy was triggered during the last 24 hours. Are these limitations intentional, or is there a better way to access this information?
Answers
If the portal doesn’t expose the metadata or views you need, another option is to build a small dashboard against the available APIs. That lets you keep your preferred filters and add fields such as policy changes or sign-in activity in one place. It takes setup time, but it avoids depending on the portal UI.
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For sign-in data, Microsoft Graph PowerShell is a better option than repeatedly setting the portal filters. The Get-MgAuditLogSignIn command can query the sign-in logs and lets you build the time range and other criteria directly into a script.
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This is one of the reasons portal-based administration can feel so frustrating. Filters, breadcrumbs, tabs, and interface preferences often reset, and even the portal search can change its results while you’re trying to select something. For repeatable work, Azure CLI, PowerShell, or Microsoft Graph are usually less painful because you can save and rerun the exact commands instead of relying on click-heavy pages.
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QuartzMango17: Azure CLI is especially useful for this. Saved commands or scripts give you reproducible results with essentially no repeated clicking.