Drill Down Levels

A drill down level allows you to specify what a user will see when they click on a certain area of a chart. For example, if they click on a Region in a bar chart, this could drill down into another chart/ table that shows the number of stores in that region or the number of sales.

When a chart or a table has a drill path defined, you can click on the chart block, or double-click on the table row, to drill down into the underlying detail.

The second icon, with one upward arrow, drills back up one level of the chart.

Creating Drill Down levels

To create drill levels, click the ‘Edit chart’ icon in the Chart tools menu on your chart.

Click the ‘Add’ icon, beneath the current chart information on the left-hand side of the screen.

You can now select the chart type and add the data that you want to display for this drill level. Please refer to Adding Data to a Chart for full details on how to do this.

To create additional drill levels, repeat the steps listed above.

When all drill levels have been created, click the ‘Save’ icon at the top of the ‘Edit chart’ screen to return to the dashboard.

Example

The main chart, in this example, shows Average number of years in each Department. When a user clicks a Job Role, another chart is displayed that shows the employee names and the number of years that each of them have been in that department. Drilling down on an employee name, shows HR information for that person such as holiday and sick leave details.

Viewing Drill Down levels

When drill down levels have been set-up on a chart, a small downward facing arrow will be visible in the top left corner of the chart cell. This indicates to a user that they can click one of the segments in the chart itself, for example one of the bars in a bar chart and view further information relating to that segment only. The downward facing arrow will remain visible in the top left corner of the chart cell until a user has drilled down to the last level.

Each drill down level will also display the filter icon to show that the chart has been filtered.

When a user drills down from a table and has previously sorted that table prior to drilling down the sort order will be retained when they drill back up to the previous level.

When a user has scrolled in a table prior to drilling down to a lower level the scroll position will be retained when they drill back to the previous level.

Returning to the Top Level

When a user has drilled down into underlying data on a chart, the two chevron icons at the top-right of the chart cell can be used to go back up through the levels.

Once you have drilled down, you will see the following icons:

	Click the double chevron icon to return to the highest level (main chart)
	Click the single chevron icon to go back one level at a time.

Click the double chevron icon to return to the highest level (main chart)

Click the single chevron icon to go back one level at a time.

Removing Drill Down levels

To remove a drill down level, click the ‘Edit chart’ icon.

In the ‘Edit chart’ screen, click the remove icon next to the drill level that you want to remove.

We’ve created a video on how to create drill paths - click here to view it.