In this article, we’ll show how to add drill-through from summary information, through to greater detail in a Power BI report. This is a great way to give report viewers control over the data they wish to see. Viewers can select a row in a table, or column in a chart, and see more detail and context for that specific value.
When added to a report, drill-through can:
- prevent ‘information overload’ when the report is first viewed
- gives a report viewer the choice of which data to focus on, and where to dig deeper
- lead to smaller and more manageable data downloads
Background
Drill-through works by linking from a page containing summary detail - we'll call this the source page - through to a second tab which contains the detail - we'll call this the destination page. Therefore, to set up drill-through you will need a report with two tabs. We recommend that the destination page is hidden, to help keep the report simple for a report viewer.
Consider an example of a sports league. The source page contains the name of each team and their league position. The target page details the results of all games throughout the season. In order to add drill-through, the team name must appear on both pages.
Lastly, note that the name of the destination report tab will appear in the message seen by a report viewer when 'Drill-through' is selected. Therefore, we recommend the destination page is named with that in mind, for example 'See team level detail'.
Watch the video and follow the steps below to see how:
Steps to add data drill-through to a report
The steps below assume you have already created a report with two tabs as described in the Background section of this article.
- Open the destination page in your report
- Open the Visualisations panel, and the Data panel
- Drag from the Data panel, the data field to be used in the drill-through. Drop this field into the area labelled 'Add drill-through fields here. For this example, the data field 'Accreditation title' will be used. Remember, this field must appear in both report tabs:
- Head back to the source tab
- Find the table column that contains the data-field you added as a the drill-through in step 3
- Right click on the column. The drill-through option (to the second tab) will appear:
The report viewer will not realise it, but they will be viewing results on the second - hidden - report tab (the destination tab). The table will be pre-filtered depending on the row selected in the source tab.
- Select 'Save' to keep the changes
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