Drilling is one of the most powerful data analysis functionalities in any reporting environment. Drilling lets you explore data beyond the data immediately visible on a report or document. You can drill through a report or document to analyze data that is closely related to the original report data, or you can expose an entirely different object on a report or document to see what the data looks like within a different context.
For example, an analyst viewing a high-level summary of your organization’s annual sales data may want to drill down into a more detailed view of that data. They may want to drill down to see the details behind the sales data for the month of January only, or they may want to drill to see details on sales data from the Northeast region. Likewise, analysts who initially view a detailed report may want to drill up to see a higher-level summary of that data.
The Drill mode options let you select default drill settings for your reports.
Drilling on a report or document is only possible if the report’s designer added a drill map to the report. You can set the following preferences even if no reports in your project contain drill maps, but the preferences will only take effect for reports that contain drill maps.
Select Preferences at the top of any page, and then click Drill mode. The following options are available:
Common Drill Preferences:
Keep parent while drilling: Determine whether or not to display the original object on the new, drilled-to report when you drill to a different level. Alternatively, you can ensure that the drill settings stored in the report definition are enforced.
Yes
No
Use the settings stored in the report definition (default)
Keep thresholds while drilling: Determine whether or not to display report thresholds on the new, drilled-to report when you drill. Alternatively, you can ensure that the drill settings stored in the report definition are enforced. This preference only takes effect if the original report contains thresholds.
Yes
No
Use the settings stored in the report definition (default)
Open drill results in a new window: Determine whether or not to display the drilled-to report in a new window. This preference means you will continue to see the original, drilled-on report as well as the new, drilled-to report. This check box is cleared by default.
Report Services Drill Preferences:
Drill within behavior: Determine whether a new display of data is opened when you drill on a document.
Automatic (default): If the data you drill to is part of the subset of data that the document was designed to contain, then the results of your drilling can be automatically displayed within the document itself. Otherwise, a new report is opened to display the data you drilled to.
Based on menu location: If the data you drill to is part of the wider set of data than the document was designed to contain, then the results of your drilling will be displayed within the document. Otherwise, a new report is opened to display the data you drilled to.
Always drill to a new report: A new report is always opened when you drill on a document. The new report shows the data that you drilled to.
From the drop-down list at the bottom of the page, apply your selections to the current project or all projects you have access to that are stored on the Intelligence Server and then click Apply.
Warning: Clicking Load Default Values will reset all of your preferences settings.
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