Data drilling is a standard business intelligence technique that allows users to analyze data from a variety of perspectives.

Data drilling comes in several different types, including drill down, drill up, drill through, and drill out.

Are you curious about the differences between these capabilities and how they’re used in dashboards and reports? If so, you’ve come to the right place.

Learn everything you need to know about these critical actions below.

Drill Down

The drill down feature lets users view lower levels of hierarchical data in a single chart. It lets them move from a more generalized level to a deeper, more in-depth one.

For example, picture a dashboard that shows sales by region. It could also drill down to show sales by country, state, city, store, etc.

Drill Down Benefits

Drilling down offers numerous benefits to users, including the following:

  • Better decision-making processes: Drilling down into data provides deeper insights, which are needed when making critical strategic decisions.
  • Increased reporting efficiency: Drill-down capabilities prevent crowded reports while still allowing you to provide essential visuals for various analytical scenarios.
  • Increased accessibility: Not all audiences have the same level of technical knowledge or ability to analyze data. The drill down feature allows those people to explore information more efficiently and still reach conclusions from it.

Drill Up

The drill-up option is the exact opposite of the drill down functionality. It lets users visualize higher levels of hierarchical data, moving from specific to more general.

For example, say you’re viewing a dashboard that shows sales per product. Drilling up would enable you to also see sales per each product category.

Drill Up Benefits

Drill-up functionalities are just as important to effective data analysis as drilling-down. Here are some examples of why the ability to drill up matters:

  • Deeper exploration: Drilling up enables users to explore data at higher levels, which can provide more context and deeper understanding.
  • Easier trend identification: Drill-up analysis can help users zoom out, making it easier to identify trends, patterns, and anomalies.
  • Improved performance monitoring: Drilling up can aid in monitoring key performance indicators (KPIs) by collecting data and bringing it together in higher-level dashboards and reports.

Drill Through

The drill-through action enables users to click on a specific data point or element and then open a new window or report showing related data. It can provide more contextual understanding related to a specific data set.

For example, if you had a dashboard that shows customer satisfaction ratings, you could drill through to show individual survey responses or other types of customer feedback. Drilling through would help you gain more insight into why your customer satisfaction ratings are what they are.

Drill Through Benefits

Drilling through provides unique benefits of its own, including these:

  • Centralized KPIs: Drilling through provides additional insights related to users’ KPIs without requiring them to jump to a new location. This allows all departments to stay connected while also having easy access to relevant data. For example, a marketing team could have an additional drill-through, which allows them to look into products that are selling the least so they can make decisions about how to promote them.
  • Enhanced visual reporting: Drill-throughs can provide a variety of graphs and charts that appear as interactive pop-ups. This approach can help relevant information stand out, making it easier for people to understand and interpret it.

Drill Out

Drilling out is not as common as the other drilling functionalities mentioned in this guide, but it’s still important to understand.

Drill-out capabilities will take a user out of the current dashboard or report and to an external link. For example, they could click on a ticket number and be launched to the company’s ticketing system.

Drill Out Benefits

Sometimes, users need to jump to another window to stay organized or access another platform. In these scenarios, being able to drill out comes in handy.

Data Drilling Best Practices

When including data drilling capabilities of any kind in a dashboard or report, be sure to keep these best practices in mind:

  • Clearly indicate that a drill down/up/through/out feature exists
  • Use filters to ensure users are accessing the correct data and improve organization
  • Include captions to help users keep track of where they are in their analysis
  • Use the same chart/graph style for all levels
  • Use consistent, clear labels, colors, and formats for all data elements

Following these tips and guidelines will help you see the best results and ensure your dashboard or report is as user-friendly as possible.

Yurbi as Your Best Friend: How Can We Help?

Understanding reporting techniques like drill-down, drill-up, drill-through, and drill-out is important in business intelligence. Thankfully, our flagship BI tool, Yurbi is fully equipped to support all these methods, ensuring a comprehensive and seamless analytical experience.

Allow us to tell you more about Yurbi.

Yurbi liberates your data exploration by allowing an unlimited number of drill fields in a report as well as innumerable drill hierarchies or levels.

Yurbi harnesses a flexible parent-target approach to drill-down, effortlessly connecting and interweaving data from varied databases, SaaS applications, and spreadsheets.

One of Yurbi's standout features is its capability to transfer criteria from dashboard filters or report prompts to the drill-down reports. This means that the context of the parent report is instinctively transferred to all target reports, ensuring coherence and consistency.

Moreover, Yurbi maintains multi-tenant and data-level security across different data sources when drilling down, guaranteeing that your information remains safe and secure.

Whether you're working with data grids, KPIs, charts, or creating your custom visualizations, Yurbi comprehensively supports drill-down functionality. You can even pass any data from a Yurbi report row as a parameter in a drill-out link, connecting effortlessly to another form, webpage, or API call.


Now that we've equipped you with rich insights about Yurbi's drill capabilities, why not experience it first-hand? We invite you to unlock the power of your data by trying our live demo sessions, absolutely free of charge.

Or perhaps you'd prefer a more in-depth discussion? Feel free to book a meeting with our team. We are eager to provide you with more information about the transformative power of Yurbi in your business intelligence journey.

Take the next step with Yurbi and make your data work for you.