Drill down & break down

BETA FEATURE

This is a Beta feature. The documentation and feature may change rapidly.

Introduction

Drill down and break down give your team instant analytical depth without leaving the dashboard. These powerful interactions transform static charts into exploratory tools—click any data point to understand what's driving the numbers.

Break down lets you split a metric by any dimension you choose — product, region, customer segment, and more. While viewing a chart, you can add or change breakdowns at will to see different perspectives of the same number.

Drill down is a filtered breakdown applied to a specific data point. When you click a value, the chart filters to that item and then shows its breakdown based on your selected dimension. Each click takes you one level deeper in the hierarchy.

Both features work immediately on your existing dashboards with zero configuration required.

Supported visualizations

• Line, column, bar, area and combination charts
• Pie, donut, pyramid and funnel charts
• Pivot table
• Conversion funnel chart (only Break Down available)

Getting started

Simply right-click any data point in a supported chart or hover to see the drill-down options. No setup needed—if you can view a dashboard, these features are ready to use.

Who has access to this feature

Users with permission to explore the associated dataset can access these interactions in a dashboard — typically those with the Explorer, Analyst, or Admin roles.

These features are not available to users accessing the dashboards via shareable links, as they are limited to Viewer role.

To customize the dimension list or disable these features, you must have either the Analyst or Admin role.

Customize the dimension list

When a user clicks "drill down" or "break down," the default dimension list displays all available dimensions from the dataset. Holistics allows you to customize this dimension list to enhance your users' experience.

For example, you can highlight the most relevant dimensions and organize them into groups such as locations, products, and user demographics as shown in the video below.

You can configure the dimension list at either the dataset level or the visualization level. This customization will apply to all metrics within the selected dataset or visualization.

In dataset

In Development, open your dataset definition, and add your breakdown group definition under: dataset > context > analysis > breakdown > group

Dataset ecommerce {
  
  models: [users, orders, cities, products]
  
  relationships: [
    relationship(orders.user_id > users.id, true),
    ...
  ]
    
  context {
    analysis {
      breakdown{
        group location {
          label: 'Locations'
          fields: [
            r(users.continent),
            r(users.country),
            r(users.city),
          ]
        }

        group product {
          label: 'Products'
          fields: [
            r(products.category),
            r(products.name),
          ]
        }
      }
    }
  }
}

In visualization

In Development, open your dashboard definition, and add your breakdown group definition under: dashboard > VizBlock > analysis > breakdown > group

Note that this will override any configuration defined at the dataset level.

block v23: VizBlock {
  label: 'Count of Users'
  viz: CombinationChart {
    dataset: ecommerce
    
    x_axis: VizFieldFull {
      ref: r(users.sign_up_date)
    }
    
    y_axis {
      series {
        field: VizFieldFull {
          ref: 'count_of_users'
        }
      }
    }

    context {
        analysis {
            breakdown {
                group user_attributes {
                    label: 'User attributes'
                    fields: [
                        r(users.country),
                        r(users.city),
                        r(users.gender),
                        r(users.age_group)
                    ]
                }
            }
        }
    }
  }
}

Best practices

• Assign a clear and intuitive label to each breakdown group to improve the end-user experience.
• Arrange fields in the group according to the preferred order, as this will imply the drill-down hierarchy, for instance: continent > country > city.

Disable the feature

In Development, you can disable the feature for an entire dataset or a specific visualization as follows:

Dataset ecommerce {

  models: [...]
  
  relationships: [...]

  metric {...}

  settings {
    analysis_interactions {
      breakdown {
        enabled: false
      }
    }
  }
}

Note that the most restrictive configuration applies. In other words, for "Drill down" and "Break down" to be available in a visualization, it must be enabled at both the dataset and visualization levels.

Breakdown groups as context for AI

Holistics AI uses context to enhance its capabilities. We encourage you to configure the breakdown groups, as this benefits both end users and the AI, rather than relying on the default settings. Learn more about Context for AI.