Drill downs are great for reducing visual clutter and engaging the end user to interact with the dashboard. They can be built using either Set or Parameter actions – in this blog I'll walk you through creating a drill down with Set actions.
- Determine what you want to drill down to and create the chart with all fields visible. In this example, I'm using Sample Superstore data to create a drill down from Product Category to Sub-Category, with Sales on Rows and Profit on Color.
- Create a Set from your drill down field – the field you want to click on and populate with another field. In this case, we want to drill down on Category. Make sure the default in your Set is that no items are selected:
3.Right click on your Set and then "Show Set." This will be an important visual cue later on to make sure you've done everything right.
- Create a Calculated Field to create the drill down flow from Category to Sub-Category.
- Create another Calculated Field to add a right arrow when a field isn't selected, and an up arrow when a field is selected. This is a nice visual cue for the user.
6.Drag your Symbol Addition Calculation to rows, between Category and Sub-Category.
7.Drag your Drill Down Calculation to the right of the Product Category Calculation.
- Remove the Sub-Category field. You should be left with 3 fields in Rows: Category, Symbol Addition, and Drill Down to Sub-Category.
- Right click on the Category field in Rows and deselect "Show Header."
10.Rename your fields to make them intuitive for the end user. In the previous steps, it was easier to build the drill down with Calculations that make sense to us as the developer, but now that we've got everything working, we can make this chart ready for the end user.
- Create a Worksheet Action (Ctrl + Shift + A) to enable a clickable drill down:
- Check your work! When you click on a Category, do you see your Set updating with your selection on the right?
If you want to see this drill down in action, check it out on my Tableau Public!