Drilling allows the user to view data insights at a more granular level. For example if a visualization shows data for a year you can use drilling to to show data for years and months.
Not all visualizations have the option to drill. You can see if a visualization has an option to drill in one of the following ways:
| Image | Description |
|---|---|
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A message saying "Right-click to drill through" appears on the tooltip. |
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When you hover over or click on a visualization, the drilling icons appear. |
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"Drill through" appears in the options when you right-click. |
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"Drill down" or "Drill up" appears in the options when you right-click. |
Let's explore what happens when you
When you drill through on a visual, you are drilling into the data represented by the data mark you are hovering over. For example, in a pie chart where the slices are are days of the week, if you right-click on the slice that represents Wednesday (1) and select drill through (2), then you are drilling into Wednesday - you will be taken to a new page and view in which the data is filtered for Wednesdays (3).
1. 
2. 
3.
See the following video example:
There are many different ways to drill down. These drills are accessible by header Icons or right click.
The following table helps explain each type of drill up and down. If before clicking on each drill down icon each data point is sum by year (image below) then the table shows what happens after clicking an icon.
| Icon | After Clicking Icon |
|---|---|
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Header drill down Icon for "go down a level in the hierarchy" |
After clicking on the drill down button the sum is shown by month. These are not separated by year so the "January" data point, for example, is the sum of January in all years in the dataset- 2020, 2021, 2022, and 2023. |
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Header drill down Icon for "Expand all down one level in the hierarchy" |
After clicking on the drill down button the sum is shown by year and month, so months are separated by year e.g. Jan 2020 and Jan 2021 are distinct data points. |
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Header drill down Icon for "Click to turn on Drill down" |
After turning on drill down and clicking on the data mark for 2022, this chart is now showing months in 2022. |
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Right click on a data mark and select "Drill down" |
Does the same thing as clicking on "Click to turn on Drill down" icon and then selecting a data mark. |
Header icon for "Drill up"
After clicking the drill up icon the chart goes up one level in the hierarchy, e.g. after being in any of the other previous example states from the table and clicking drill up, you go back to the Sum by Years state.
Check out this video to see the drilling header icons in action:
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