Drill Downs, Drill Ups, and Interactivity

Drill downs, drill ups, and filter interactivity are advanced features in dashboards that allow to explore data in depth, connect insights across widgets, and analyze information dynamically. These features enhance the dashboard’s usability and impact. They allow deep diving into the data and uncover meaningful insights without navigating away, hence support informed decision-making.

Drill Downs:

Drill downs allow users to break down summarized data into more detailed insights. For instance, clicking on a total loan amount by state in a bar chart could reveal the loan distribution across regions within that state. This feature lets users dig deeper into specific data points without cluttering the main dashboard.

When to Use Drill Downs

• Hierarchical Data: When data is structured across multiple levels, such as states, regions, and branches.

• Detailed Analysis: When exploring specific dimensions and metrics, such as analysing branch-wise performance within a region.

• Interactive Dashboards: When creating dashboards that encourage user exploration and provide multi-level insights by providing drop-downs.

Example

In a loan data dashboard clicking on a state in the Loan Amount by State chart shows loan amounts by regions within that state, such as Northern California and Southern California.

Drill Ups:

Drill ups enable to return to higher-level summaries after exploring detailed data. For example, after drilling down to view regional loan amounts, drill ups allow moving back to the state-level summary. This ensures smooth navigation and maintains the context of the overall data.

When to Use Drill Ups

• Contextual Navigation: When need to return to broader data views after detailed exploration.

• Comparative Analysis: When comparing data across higher levels, such as total loan amounts across multiple states.

• Interactive Analysis: When providing flexibility for users to move between summaries and details.

Example

In the loan data dashboard, after analysing regional data like Northern California and Southern California in the Loan Amount by State chart, drill-ups allow returning to the state-level summary for a broader view.

Interactivity

Interactivity enables dashboards to dynamically respond to user actions. Clicking on a dimension value in one widget, such as a Home Loan bar in a loan product chart, filters the entire dashboard to display relevant data in other widgets with interactivity enabled and linked to the same Datasource.

When to Use Interactivity

• Cross-Widget Analysis: To analyze relationships across different data points, such as filtering branch performance by loan product.

• Focus on Specific Data: To drill into specific metrics or dimensions, like filtering customer demographics by loan type.

Example

In a loan data dashboard selecting the dimension value - ‘Home Loan’ in the chart - ‘Loan Amount by Product’ , filters the entire dashboard to display data specific to home loans.