Drilling into Reports

Drill paths allow users to select specific report values to view them from a new perspective (drill down/in) or to discover more data from a different report or dashboard tab (drill across). When a user clicks a linked metric value or attribute value in a report, the linked report or dashboard tab is displayed with data filtered by the selection in the original report.

• Any user of the report can select the drill path. Depending on the target report’s permissions, the report is displayed to the user.
• Report users may navigate up and down drill paths using the breadcrumb trail displayed in the secondary reports.
• Report users can select different visualization options for the secondary report.

Drill Types

Drilling falls into two functional categories containing a total of three drill types:

• Drilling Down and Drilling In: Selecting a report value leads to a version of the same report as the original, but this version breaks that metric down by a new attribute. Values in the new report are filtered for the attribute value  selected when the drill path was initiated.
• Drill Across: Selecting a report value initiates a drill path that leads to an entirely distinct report or dashboard tab, which is specified by the author of the drill path. 

Both drilling down/in and drilling across lead a user to another report or dashboard tab that is filtered for the subset of data selected in the original report.

Drill Usecases

Simple Drill-in

Goal: You have a report showing the amounts of closed deals in 2016 broken per months. When you click an amount, you want to see how this amount is distributed between your sales departments in the USA and EMEA.

Example: When you click the amount of $1,000,000 that was closed in June 2016, you see that $250,000 of these deals were closed in the USA Sales department and $750,000 of these deals were closed in the EMEA Sales department.

Solution: Set up the following drill-in path in the report (see Drilling In):

• When I click on: the metric representing the total amounts, Total Amount
• Show me: the attribute representing a sales department’s location, Dept Location

Simple Drill-down

Goal: You have a report showing the total number of hired employees in the Sales, Marketing, and HR departments. When you click a department, you want to see how the number of employees hired for this department is broken down by the department location (the USA and EMEA).

Example: When you click the Marketing department for which the total of 25 employees were hired, you see that 15 employees were hired in the USA and 10 employees were hired in EMEA.

Solution: Set up the following drill-down path in the report (see Drilling Down):

• When I click on: the attribute representing the department name, Department
• Show me: the attribute representing a department’s location, Dept Location

Combining Drill-in and Drill-across

Goal: You have a headline report showing the total number of visitors in all your restaurants last year. When you click the total number of visitors, you want to see a report showing the 10 most visited restaurants (a top 10 report), with the numbers of visitors for each restaurant separately. When you click a restaurant from the top 10 report, you want to see a dashboard tab with complete information about this restaurant including its annual revenue and the number of employees.

Example: The total number of visitors is 10,000,000. When you click this number, you see the 10 most visited restaurants, including a restaurant called ‘Castle’, which 120,000 people visited last year. When you click this restaurant in the 10 report, you are redirected to a dashboard tab called ‘Restaurant Overview’ where the information about the Castle restaurant is displayed, including its annual revenue ($1,400,000) and the number of employees (65).

Solution:

1. In the headline report, set up the following drill-in path:
   • When I click on: the metric representing the total number of visitors, Number of Visitors
   • Show me: the report showing the 10 most visited restaurants (top 10 report), Top 10 Restaurants
2. In the same drilling dialog, set up further drilling, that is a drill-across path from the top 10 report:
   • When I click on: the attribute representing the restaurant name, Restaurant
   • Show me: the dashboard tab where information about the restaurants is presented, Restaurant Overview

Levels of Adding Drill Paths

Drill-down and drill-in paths allow users to select a report value to link to a related report that breaks the same metric down by a new attribute, all filtered for the report value that was selected to initiate the drilling.

Drill-across paths lead to an entirely new report or dashboard tab, which may contain different metrics and attributes, but is still filtered for the report value that was selected to initiate the drilling.

Drill paths can be defined in three areas of the application to different effect:

• All three types of drilling can be configured locally from the configurations pane of a report on a dashboard – affecting just that one report.
• Drill-in paths can be configured globally from the Report Editor’s sliding configurations pane – affecting the active report wherever it appears in the workspace’s dashboards.
• Drill-down paths can be configured globally from the Manage section in an attribute’s detail page – affecting that attribute wherever it appears in workspace reports.

 Drilling type limitations:

Click to know more about a certain type of the drilling:

• Drilling Across
• Drilling Down
• Drilling In
• Defining Global Drill Down Paths