Drillthrough report in Power BI

In this article we will look at using Power BI’s Drillthrough functionality using four simple steps.

In the Power BI report shown in the screenshots below, I have created two report pages, first page ‘Products’ has ‘Sales Amount by Product Category’ dashboard and the second page ‘Year Comparison’ has ‘Sales Amount by Calendar Year’ dashboard. Data source of this report is the ‘Internet Sales’ data mart of the ‘AdventureWorksDW2017´ SQL server database.

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Now, we look at drilling through into ‘Year Comparison’ page  from ‘Product Category’ column in the ‘Sales amount by Product Category’ dashboard in ‘Products’ page, and understand how the dashboard  ‘Sales Amount by Calendar Year’  output is affected according to the ‘Product Category’ that was used while drilling through. Lets’ look at the steps involved in doing this

1) In order to make the ‘Year Comparison’ page as Drillthrough page for ‘Product Category’ column, drag and drop the ‘Product Category’ field into the ‘Drillthrough filters’ section of the page.

2) After the first step, you see a ‘back’ button visual on the top left corner of the ‘Year Comparison’ report page. Select the ‘back’ button and modify the properties under the ‘Format Shape’ section. Change the ‘Action’ to ‘On’, and then select ‘Type’ filter under it to ‘Back’. This step will enable us to go back to ‘Products’ page while we perform Drillthrough operation.

3) Now we are ready to perform the drillthrough operation in the ‘Products’ page. Right-click on any of the ‘Product Category’ column values in the ‘Sales amount by Product Category’ dashboard, you will now see ‘Drillthough’ option and when you select it, shows the ‘Year Comparison’ as Drillthrough page to select. Select it to drillthrough to the year wise sales of the Product Category value selected. (Once you are navigated through to the ‘Year Comparison’ drillthrough page, you could now compare the total sales amount on the ‘Sales Amount by Calendar Year’ dashboard matches with the Product Category’s Sales Amount used for Drillthrough).

4) To go back to the ‘Products’ page where the Drillthrough operation was performed, CTRL+click on the ‘back’ button on the ‘Year Comparison’ page (when the report is used from Power BI service, you can just click on the button).

Hope this will help you to understand and use the Drillthrough functionality in Power BI.