Drill Through Reports

Drill Through reports are a collection of a driver report and sub-reports that are tied together based on defined rules. The sub-reports are populated based on selections made in the driving report.

The key to creating useful Drill Through reports is to understand which report is driving the changes and which reports are driven by the driving report.

For example, you are a software manager who manages multiple teams and you need to know how items are distributed among each team. To assess possible risks, you also need to see the distribution for each developer and the trend for the length of time items are opened and closed for each developer. In the scenario you would create this Drill Through report as follows:

Distribution of all Open Items by Team.
Distribution of items by Developer. (Driven by Team from Report 1)
Open and Close Trend. (Driven by Developer from Report 2)

Report 1 is the main driver. Clicking on a particular team in Report 1 filters Report 2 to display the items broken down by developer for that team. Clicking a particular developer in Report 2 will drive Report 3 by displaying the trend report for that developer's items.

Before creating your Drill Through report you must create the reports that will be displayed. The main driving report will be a distribution report that summarizes the overall data to display. You will then have one to three additional sub-reports that will be driven by either this driving report or a different sub-report. These sub-reports give users a different dimensional view of the summarized data. For example, if you have the issues summarized by Products in your Driving Report, then the sub-report may show how the issues are distributed across developers in that product line. In this example, the Products report drives the Distribution Across Developers report.

Note: Drill Through reports are different than Drill Down reports. Drill Down reports allow users to navigate from a summarized view to a listing of all the individual items. Drill Through reports allow users to see different dimensions of the same data in variable report formats.

In addition, Multi-View and Drill Through reports display multiple reports on one page. The main differences are that Multi-View reports can display any report type in any order on the page while Drill Through reports are designed for Distribution reports which pass information between the different reports.

Key Benefits

Drill Through reports are interactive reports driven from a distribution report, that allows users to see different dimensions of the data from the same application.
Drill Through reports create a full spectrum multi-view report with high-level visibility and the ability to drill through into more granular details.

Content Options

The following sections describe the configuration options available in the Content area for Drill Through reports:

Selecting Reports and Data Bindings for Your Drill Through Report

You can add any report that you have privileges to run to a Drill Through report, except:

Reports that contain query-at-runtime parameters
Deleted Item reports
Multi-View reports
Other Drill Through reports

Note: All Drill Through reports should be based on the same application. You cannot pass data from a report in one application into a report from another application.

To select reports for a Drill Through report:

Select your driving report by searching for your report and choosing it from the results.
- The Driving Report report is a Distribution report that contains the data that you want to "Drill Through" to.
- To search for a report in the list, type a keyword or part of a keyword contained in the report title in the box next to the button, and then click .
Select Report 2 using the same process. Note that Report 2 will be driven by the Driving Report.
Right-click on the arrow between the Driving Report and Report 2, and select the data that you want to pass from the Driving Report to Report 2.
Important: The arrow only becomes active after you select Report 2.

See Results for an example of how you could configure a Drill Through report.
Repeat Steps 2 and 3 to add additional reports such as Report 3 and Report 4.
Note: If you do pick a report with drill down functionality and if you have not set any drill through rules, then when the user clicks on the report, the drill down functionality will be active. If the drill down report is set with drill through rules, such as the Driving Report, then the drill down functionality will be deactivated.

To remove a report from the box, select it and click . This will cause all of the reports to move up one space. For example, if you delete Report 2, then Report 3 will move to Report 2's location. Note that you cannot delete the Driving Report; however, you can replace it by selecting a new one.

Selecting a Layout Design for Your Drill Through Report

You can choose from several layout designs to display your Drill Through report. By default, reports included in a Drill Through report are displayed in a grid format in the order specified in the Select Layout box. For best results, use this layout design for Listing-type reports.

You can also choose to display reports side by side or in a variety of other layout designs. Graphical and tabular reports are best suited for these layout designs.

To select a layout design:

Click the Up and Down arrows next to the Select Layout box to view the provided designs. The layout design selected when the report is saved is used to display the Drill Through report.

Results

Drill Through reports allow you to click on data in one report and populate the linked reports with the selected data.

The following example explains how you would use a Drill Through report:

Report 1 is a driving report. It is a Percentile Stacked Bar chart report that shows the distribution of items based on State and Severity. Click on a segment in one of the bars in Report 1, and then Reports 2 and 3 will be updated with the selected data. The Drill Through report is configured to pass both Severity and State (Column and Row) to the other reports, which means only the items referenced by the particular segment would be passed.
Report 2 is a bar chart showing the distribution of items for each developer based on functional area. Selecting any of the columns will update Report 3 with the items that you have selected.
Report 3 is an Open and Completed trend report. It shows the completion trend for the items that were selected in either Report 1 or Report 2.

Zoom Icons

Note: Drill down reports that are used to drive other reports, like Report 1 and Report 2 in the previous example, will not allow users to drill down.

Click the zoom-in icon to expand a report to the full pane. Click the zoom-out icon to return to the drill through view.