Data Drilldown & Widget Interaction

The data drill down works quite similarly to a dashboard link. The difference is that the data drill down is defined specific to the dashboard and the widget (not only the widget) and with the data drill down it is possible to pass filters to the next dashboard either by using static values, the current dashboards filter values or values from a widget interaction (available only for multi charts and table widgets).

If a data drill-down is defined for a widget that has a dashboard link as well the dashboard link will point to the dashboard of the data drill-down.

Configure a Data Drilldown

To configure a data drill-down you need to click on a widget while in the dashboard edit mode. In the right sidebar, a new tab called Widget should appear. Under Link, you can define the target dashboard.

Note that you can also use the current dashboard as the target dashboard.

The widget now gets a new buttonin the top right corner, which directs the user to the target dashboard. With this configuration, the link will work just as for the dashboard link (if a dashboard link is defined as well it get overwritten). But in the link setting, there are more options available. You can define which values should be passed to which filter of the target dashboard. The possible options are:

• Passing a static filter value to a filter in the target dashboard (available for all widgets).

• Passing any current filter value of the section the widget is in, to a filter with matching type on the target dashboard (available for all widgets).

• Passing the value from a widget interaction to a filter with matching type on the target dashboard (available only for multi charts, table widgets, and pie chart).

If you pass a filter operator that is not allowed in the filter of your target dashboard, the filter will not use your passed filter values and instead fallback to its default operator and value settings.

You can interact with the multi-chart by clicking a data point. With the table widget, you interact by clicking a row and with the pie chart, you just click a section.

In the following example, the passing of the current timestamp filter to both sections of the target dashboard is configured.

Passing current filter values to the target dashboard.

Passing current filter values to the target dashboard in an overview widget.

Note that you can pass multiple filter values to multiple filters on the target dashboard with one click.

Widget Interactions

A widget with a possible interaction is marked with in the top left corner (unless the header is hidden). It is possible to configure a widget interaction for the following widgets.

Multi Chart

If you pass values from a multi-chart, you can either pass the X or Y value if the data type coincides with the type of the filter. If the widget uses auto generated series you can also use the series column.

Table Widget

Any of the columns used in the table widget can be used to pass to a filter, given that the types match.

Pie Chart

With the pie chart, you have the option to pass the category or the values to a filter, given that the types match.

Normally the values from the widget interaction are passed into a "=" filter, except if you are passing a timestamp. Then you have multiple options, like using this hour, day, month, or a custom range that sets the filter to a given time frame relative to the value from the interaction.

Examples

The following video is an example of how one would configure the drill-down passing the time frame of 10 minutes surrounding the selected data point and the grouping (or series) variable of the data point. This could be used as "time-zooming" if the drill-down is applied to the same dashboard.

Data Drilldown on a multi chart.

The next example shows the configuration for a table widget passing the value from the "Thing" column to the linked dashboard.

Data Drilldown on a table widget.

Data Drilldown on the overview widget.

Adding parameters to a filter with table interaction drilldowns

Imagine you have a table widget in your dashboard, that you configured to link to another dashboard when you click on a table row. When clicking the table row, you configured that the value of the thing column in the selected row should override a thing filter in your target dashboard.

With this configuration, every time you click on a table row, you will get navigated to the defined target dashboard and the configured thing filter will be overwritten with an equals filters and the thing of the table row you clicked. A nice use case for this would be, for example, if you configure your tablet widget to link back to the same dashboard you're already on (a self referencing dashboard drilldown), you can use the table widget as a kind of "quick filter switch", where you just need to click on any table row to adjust dashboard filters instead of adjusting the dashboard filter directly.

Example of switching a thing filter with a self referencing dashboard drilldown

But what if you want to, instead of overwriting the filter each time with the new clicked thing, add it to the filter together with the existing filter values? Instead of using an "equals" filter, we are going to use an "in" filter to accomplish this, because an "in" filter can use multiple different parameters instead of the one parameter that an "equals" filter uses.

To configure this behavior, switch to edit mode of your dashboard, select the table widget you want to define the drilldown for and switch to the "Widget" tab in the sidebar. In here you can define your destination dashboard and the filters you want to override as usual. When you define a filter override with "Values from table interaction" however, you will see a checkbox labeled "Override with in/not in filter". When checking this checkbox, you will also see a new select box labeled "Take existing parameters from".

The "Override with in/not in filter" options will only be visible when the target filter you want to overwrite is a thing, text, number or boolean filter. This is simply due to the fact that there is no "in" filter on timestamp filters.

Dashboard drilldown settings for overwriting the target filter with an in-filter instead of an equals-filter

When activating the "Override with in/not in filter" checkbox, all that will happen is that when navigating to the target dashboard, the specified filter will be overwritten with an "in" filter instead of an "equals" filter. This alone would result in the same behavior as just using an "equals" filter because the parameters of the "equals" filter will be overwritten completely every time you redo the dashboard drilldown.

To be able to take the already specified parameters of the in filter and merge it with the selected thing from the table widget interaction, you need to additionally specify the filter from which the existing parameters should be taken in the "Take existing parameters from" select.

After doing that, the following logic will happen:

1. When doing the first drilldown and selecting a table row with "thing1", it will navigate to the same dashboard and override the "Custom Thing Filter" with an "in"-Filter and the "thing1" parameter.

2. When doing another drilldown by now click e.g. on the table row with "thing3", we will take the existing parameters from the "Custom Thing Filter", which is "thing1" and merge it together with "thing3", so that after the drilldown navigation happened, the "Custom Thing Filter" now has both "thing1" and "thing3" as parameters.

Self referencing dashboard drilldown, overwriting the custom thing filter with an "in" filter and adding new parameters each time a table row is clicked

Navigation to previous dashboards

Instead of using the browser back button to navigate backwards to a previously visited dashboard, you can also define drill-downs to go back to previous dashboards. The advantage of this is that you can also specify if certain filters in the previous dashboard should be overwritten with the filters of your current dashboard.

To configure a drill-down to go to the previously visited dashboard, simply select the widget you want to define the drill-down for in dashboard edit mode, navigate to the Widget tab on the right-hand sidebar, and tick the checkbox Link to previous dashboard. Your drill-down will now lead you back to the previously visited dashboard.

If you e.g. directly navigate to a dashboard that contains a widget that has a drill-down to the previous dashboard definded, there technically is no previous dashboard available. If this is the case the drill-down currently does nothing. This behaviour may change in the future.

Passing filters to the previous dashboard

After enabling Link to previous dashboard, you will also see two other checkboxes, one for overriding the global timestamp filter and another for the global thing filter. If you tick e.g. the Override Global Timestamp Filter checkbox, the value from the global timestamp filter in the current dashboard will be carried over when navigating to the previous dashboard and will be set there.

If you navigate back from a dashboard with one section, to e.g. a dashboard with 3 sections and have any of the Override Filter checkboxes active, your current global filter value will be written to the respective global filter in all 3 sections.

So for example, having Override Global Timestamp Filter enabled, will take your current global timestmap filter, and override every global timestamp filter in all sections in your previous dashboard.

Example of a navigation to the previous dashboard with Override Global Timestamp Filter enabled