You can make your reports interactive by allowing your users to drill down into the detailed data that they need from a clean view of the high level data. You can achieve this with collapsible table groups (drill down), or with links to detail reports (drill through).
Drill Down
Drill-down reports are created using a table with groups. The group header represents the clean view of the high level data, and a second group becomes the collapsed detail data. For this reason, the collapsible property is only enabled when there are at least two groups, and the top-level group has a group header row.
When the report runs, data in the group header displays with a plus sign icon, as all groups are collapsed by default. Click the icon to expand the group and display any related detail data. Click the minus sign icon to collapse the group.
You can see this type of report in action in the Playlist Drilldown sample.
Exporting a drill-down report to Excel is the best way to preserve the interactivity, as Excel can duplicate the collapsible table group feature.
If you export a drill-down report to HTML, PDF, or an image format, any content which is hidden at the time of export remains hidden in the exported file. If you want all of the content to appear in the exported file, you must first expand each area of hidden data.
If you export a drill-down report to XML, all hidden data is exported regardless of whether it is hidden at the time of export.
Drill Through
Drill-through reports have links to separate reports with more detailed data. The linked report must have parameters, so that the main report can pass a value from the clicked link. The main report can have links on table cells or chart data points from which they derive the value to pass to the detail report.
When the main report runs, the data points or table cells with drill-through links change the pointer to a hand when you mouse over them, like hyperlinks on Web pages.
You can see this type of report in action in the Employee Sales Summary sample.
At design time, tables and charts that have drill through links are marked with an orange triangle at the bottom right corner.
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Caution: If you change the name of the report that drill through links point to, the links are broken until you update them. |