Power BI Desktop, drilldown

Drilldown is a term that describes obtaining additional details of a report based on the selected reporting dimension. If you are an experienced Pivot table user you are most certainly aware of the technique. This operation can be also carried out over reports created within PowerBI Desktop environment. In text that follows, I will show you how to perform drilldown.

After you create a report and select it you will see the context sensitive ribbon Data Drill. It contains several options that can help you to show or hide additional details of the report. To be able to do drilldown is necessary that the report have at least two levels of the hierarchy. For this purpose, I will add a dimension PROIZVOĐAČ (Manufacturer) and KLASIFIKACIJA (Classification), and the values that sum up are the sum of the quantities sold. The chart that I have created is the Bar Chart.

If you choose Drill Down option and then click on desired bar that represents manufacturer the chart will change and it will show all classifications of sold goods for selected manufacturer. By clicking Drill Up we’ll get back to upper detail level.

By clicking option See Records it is possible to see records after getting more detailed report. If this option is enabled, instead of getting changed chart after drilldown you’ll get a list of records.

Option Expand Next level creates more detailed report by merging two hierarchy levels into one (PROIZVOĐAČ + KLASIFIKACIJA), since Show Next Level does usual display of more details within report. If you have selected See Data option, below the chart you’ll be able to see data table by which a chart has been made.