Report-Level Drill Paths and Hyperlinks

When the dashboard or space-level drill paths are not exactly what you want for a particular Visualizer report, you can create one or more custom drill paths for it. A drill path is normally associated with an attribute, so if you show multiple attributes then you can have multiple drill paths.

Each report-level drill path must be unique and attributes cannot appear in more than one drill path in the same report.

Drilling behavior follows this hierarchy:

• Dashboard-level drill-across links.
• Report-level drill paths as described in this topic.
• Space-level drill paths
  • Drill maps defined at the space level.See Creating a Drill Map.
  • Hierarchies in the dimensional model of the space.See Creating Hierarchies.
  • Built-in Time series drill paths. See Time Attributes and Time Series Measures.

As Visualizer users click through drill paths, the nodes display across the top of reports. To see how drilling works in Visualizer see Drilling in Visualizer.

Drill paths create filters that apply across a dashboard. When a business user clicks to activate a drill path in Dashboards 2.0, the filter card for that drill node appears.

For table reports, drill paths and hyperlinks are underlined in blue. Also, hovering over a hyperlink may display the link path in the browser, depending upon the browser's support for this functionality.

• Create a report-level drill map
• Disable drilling for an attribute
• Add a hyperlink to a report. See Adding Hyperlinks to a Visualizer Report.
  

To create a report-level drill path

For example, you have a chart showing Revenue by Region and you want users to be able to drill from a Region column to see a chart showing Revenue by Products in that Region. Then when the user clicks on a Product, a hyperlink for that Product leads to an external website.

The drill path follows: Region > Product > Hyperlink.

1. From a Visualizer report, click Advanced Tools - Report-Level Drilling.
   
   
   
2. In the Report-Level Drilling window click Add.
   
3. Name the new Drill Path.
   
4. In the New Drill Path panel select the first attribute.
   
5. Click Drill To.
   
6. Select the second attribute.
   
   
7. Click Hyperlink.
   
   
8. Enter the URL using BQL syntax. Surround the URL in single quotes. For example, to use the value of Products.Products in a Google search:
   'http://www.google.com/search?q='+[Products.Products]
   
   
9. Select whether to open the URL in a New Window or in the Same Window as the report.
10. Click Done to exit the Report Level Drilling window.
11. Click Save to save the report.
12. Test the report.
    1. Click a Region bar to drill to the Products for that Region. You see the drill path at the top of the report.
       
       
    2. Click a Product column to drill to the URL for that Product.
       
       
13. Add the report to a dashboard and save the dashboard.

To disable drilling on an attribute

In some cases you may want to disallow drilling on an attribute that is already configured for drilling, such as the built-in Time series.

From a Visualizer report, click Settings - Report-Level Drilling.

1. In the Report-Level Drilling window click Add.
   
2. Name the new Drill Path.
   
3. In the New Drill Path panel select the attribute that you want to disable.
4. Click No Drill.
   
5. Click Done to exit the Report Level Drilling window.
6. Click Save to save the report.
7. Test the report.