Drill to Chart

Drill to Chart allows a user to click on part of one chart and view related information in another chart. For example, we may have a bar chart that shows the different stages of a marketing campaign. When one of the bars (Stage) is clicked, a different chart will be displayed showing information about that stage. Note that the object(s) you wish to use to make the decision needs to exist in the previous drill level.

Example

The main chart in this example is a stacked bar chart, when a user clicks the bar representing the ‘Won’ stage for one of the sales people, a map will be displayed showing the location of the customers that have been won.

In order to use Drill to Chart, you will need to create the chart that you want to create the link to, this can either mean creating the chart from scratch or linking to an existing one in the library. If you need to create a new chart, please refer to the section Creating Charts for full details. 

Create your first chart and then click the ‘Edit chart’ icon in the Chart tools menu. 

Click the ‘Add’ icon beneath the objects for your first chart at the top-left of the screen.

Click the Chart menu in the ‘Edit chart’ screen and from the available charts, click ‘Drill to Chart’.

You will now be able to create the different ‘Drill to Chart’ settings. 

Click the ‘—Please Select—’ drop-down arrow, a list of the objects used to create your name chart will be displayed. 

Choose the comparison operator that you want to use for example, greater than or equal to and then click the final drop-down and choose the relevant option from the list. 

Example

This example shows that for a Drill to Chart setting has been created for when a user clicks the ‘Won’ stage in the main chart.

After specifying the first condition, you can either select the chart that you want to be displayed or alternatively, you can create an AND condition for example, when the stage = won and the salesperson = Dawn Day then display a chart.

To add the chart that you want to view when this condition is met, click the ‘Shows’ button. 

Click the drop-down list in the second box and select the name of the chart that you want to display from the library.

To create further steps for example, if the Stage = Won display Won – Location chart OR if Stage = Lost display Lost – Employee Detail chart click the OR button. When all steps have been created, click the ‘Save’ icon at the top-left to return to the dashboard.

It’s always good practice as a ‘Catch All’, in case you drill down on an item that doesn’t match any of the specified logic, to set the final level of the Drill to Chart logic to ‘Default’. To do this, ensure you tick the ‘Default’ box on the final drill level. You will then be able to specify an ‘Otherwise’ condition as shown in the following screenshot by selecting the chart that you want to be displayed.

You can also define whether the chart it drills to displays as full screen or not by ticking the ‘Full screen to display this level’ box on the Attributes tab.

Suppressing the Drill Condition message

When an undefined ‘Drill to Chart’ condition has been created, a warning message will be displayed on the dashboard when a user clicks down to this level.

If you want to prevent this message from being displayed, untick the ‘Show warning message when user clicks on a condition that is not defined’ box at the top of the ‘Data’ tab.

Viewing Drill to Chart steps

When Drill to Chart steps have been created, you can view them by clicking the Drill to Chart icon in the ‘Edit chart’ screen on your main chart.

Deleting a Drill to Chart step

To remove any of the steps that have been created, click the ‘Edit chart’ icon on your main chart (this is where the ‘Drill to Chart’ levels have been created). 

Click the ‘Drill to Chart’ icon at the top-left of the screen. 

To remove one of the steps, click the ‘Remove’  icon beneath the relevant step.