Drill Down in Power BI: How It's Changed Our Way to Explore Data

What’s the first thing that comes to mind when you hear "drill down"? Maybe it evokes images of massive industrial equipment digging deep into the earth, unearthing hidden treasures.

In a similar way, when you drill down in a Power BI report, you dig deeper into your data, uncovering insights that aren’t immediately visible.

What is Drill Down in Power BI?

Drill down is an interaction that reveals a deeper level of data to the user.

It enables users to navigate through layers of data, transitioning from summary views to detailed insights. For instance, starting with a yearly sales overview, a drill down can break this into quarterly, monthly, or even daily figures, providing a comprehensive understanding of trends and anomalies.

Example of Drill-Down in Timeline Chart

For example, you may use a financial report that features a timeline chart of your revenue. The default view is set to a monthly summary, and you notice a massive spike in May. By drilling down, you can expand May into a more granular view and see a daily view, which will help pinpoint the reason for that spike – a successful sales deal closed on May 12.

Drill Down in Categories with Combo Chart

Here’s another example — a column chart comparing the sales performance of various product categories. The columns will show the total sales of each category, but what if you want to take a closer look at your best-performing products within a specific category? When you drill down, the view will shift to a more granular level.

How to Drill Down in Power BI?

In the default Power BI visuals, drill down features can be activated via the action bar which can be accessed by hovering over the visualization. If enabled, the action bar will contain controls for multiple data exploration features, including a drill down and up button.

Another way to provide drill down controls is by putting the button in a right-click menu. The user can access it by right-clicking directly on the visual.

How ZoomCharts Made Drill Down Intuitive & Fast

During the design process of Drill Down PRO Visuals, we made the decision to focus on drill down as the main user interaction. We discovered that most users click or tap in Power BI with the intention to reveal more data, which is why, for Drill Down visuals, it’s the default behavior for most left-click interactions.

How to Implement Drill Down in Power BI

Incorporating drill down capabilities into your Power BI reports enhances interactivity and user engagement. Here's how you can set it up:

1️⃣ Choose Drill Down Capable Visuals

You have to make sure that the visuals you want to use support drill down features in the first place.

Many default Power BI visuals come equipped with this functionality, and numerous custom visuals from AppSource offer advanced drill down interactions.

2️⃣ Design Data with Hierarchies

The visual needs to know what to show in the initial view and what data to drill down to - which is why your categorical or time-based data should contain a hierarchy.

Categorical data (for pie, donut, bar, or similar chart types) should contain multiple categories that you can use to create a hierarchy. For example, in a human resources (HR) database, each employee may be assigned to their own team; and then each team can be assigned to a larger department.

3️⃣ Enable Drill Down Features

Within your chosen visual, activate the drill down option. This typically involves selecting the visual and toggling the drill down feature in the visualization pane.

4️⃣ Interact with the Visual

Once set up, users can click on data points within the visual to navigate through different levels of data granularity.

Power BI Drill Down vs Drill Through: What's the difference?

You’ve probably seen these two terms – drill down and drill through. Even though they both talk about “drilling” into data to reveal more insights, they are not to be used interchangeably. Here’s a brief overview of the three drilling-related terms you are likely to encounter when using Power BI.

• Power BI Drill Down: When you perform this action, you change the visual’s view to one level below in the data hierarchy.
• Power BI Drill Up: This is the opposite of a drill down. If you want to return to the previous view, simply drill up to go one level above.
• Power BI Drill Through: This is an interaction which will reveal a more detailed and thorough look at the data, usually as a table or destination target page. The report creator can choose a specific selection of data or show all data at once. Depending on the visuals or settings, drill through is usually activated via right-click menu, toolbar controls, or a specific button manually placed by the report creator.

Benefits of Using Drill-Down Features

Implementing drill down functionality in your reports offers several advantages:

• Enhanced Data Exploration: Users can investigate data at various levels, leading to more informed decision-making. The initial view can provide a holistic overview of the data, but if the user wants to drill down to specific sections they are interested in, it’s also possible.
• Improved User Engagement: Interactive reports encourage users to engage more deeply with the data, fostering a culture of exploration and curiosity.
• Streamlined Reporting: Instead of creating multiple reports for different data levels, a single drill down-enabled report can serve multiple purposes. If the same visual can fulfill multiple purposes and provide more answers, you will require fewer visuals on your report to tell the entire story with your data.

Best Practices for Effective Reports

What would happen if the entire Power BI report was designed in such a way to encourage users to explore the data, find answers they’re looking for and get a deeper insight?

The answer to that question is Drill Down Reports – a new approach to Power BI report design which empowers any user to get immersed into the data exploration process and participate in data analysis.

Here are four key best practices for optimizing these reports:

1. Focus on Intuitive Interactions: Ensure that drill-down features are easy to use and accessible with on-chart clicks or taps, making the process seamless for users.
2. Prioritize Cross-Chart Filtering: Implement cross-chart filtering to provide contextually relevant data, enhancing the user experience as they interact with different visuals.
3. Design with Exploration in Mind: Build reports that encourage curiosity, guiding users to uncover insights and avoid complacency or tunnel vision.
4. Make Drill Downs the Central Feature: Highlight drill-down capabilities as the main interaction in the report, rather than hiding them behind menus or controls, to increase engagement.

By following these best practices, you'll create dynamic, user-friendly reports that strengthen data culture and boost Power BI adoption within your organization.

Visuals that are made for 'Drilling down'

While Power BI offers built-in drill down capabilities, third-party tools like ZoomCharts provide enhanced features for a superior user experience. ZoomCharts Drill Down PRO Visuals are designed with user-friendly interactions, allowing for seamless data exploration.

ZoomCharts drill down capabilities will be more intuitive to use and readily apparent to the user, which will encourage them to interact with these features and explore data in closer detail. Furthermore, other visuals will provide contextually relevant info as the user drill downs or filters information on one chart, thanks to cross-chart filtering – making Drill Down Reports truly intelligent and dynamic.

Explore report with Drill Down Capabilities

Here's an example, as imagined by our team of report creators and UX experts. Our Use-case Gallery contains multiple Drill Down Report templates you can download and take inspiration from, but we’d like to highlight our Revenue vs Budget report that allows users to easily take a look at the main financial performance indicators – revenue, profit, budget completion, and others.

Try this report in action!

The finance dashboard's user-friendly design is clean and visually pleasing, combining quick insights at the first glance with excellent drill-down capabilities. For example, if you want to see a more detailed revenue and budget breakdown per a specific channel or product, simply click on the specific bar you’re interested in to drill down.