I'm using jqGrid with the filter toolbar, i need to set an initial default filter value to one of the fields so that only rows with status 'Open' are displayed by default, but the user can display Closed rows if desired.

At the moment i have a workaround like this

`setTimeout(function() {$('#gs_Status').val('Open');$("#eventsGrid")[0].triggerToolbar()},500);`

but it results in a second request and is pretty bad really.

Does anybody know how to do this?

**Edit**: A bit more research tells me this is probably impossible :(