is there a way to programatically set a filter in jquery jqgrid?

the way i solved this was to pass in the following code:

var myfilter = { groupOp: "AND", rules: [] };
myfilter.rules.push({ field: "DataIssuesYN", op: "eq", data: "Y" });

and then in the jqGrid setup, I pass into postData:

  postData: (myfilter) ? { filters: JSON.stringify(myfilter)} : {},