Version 2021

Creating a new drill path

A drill map determines what happens when you drill on an object in a report. Objects can be associated with drill maps, making them the location where the drill starts. For each object associated with a drill map, at least one drill path is created. The drill path determines what happens when you drill on the object and includes the destination of the drill. The destination can be an attribute, a consolidation, a hierarchy, or a template. For example, the system hierarchy (the default drill map) allows you to drill up from Month to Year, or down to Day, or across to Month of Year (the name of the month).

When you create a new drill path, you also select properties to define that drill path, such as the interaction with filters. These properties, which are described in the following procedure, can be overwritten either:

For examples of the drilling properties, see the Drill Maps chapter of the Advanced Reporting Help.

To create a new drill path

  1. Open the Drill Map Editor. How?

  2. Navigate to the destination object in the Object Browser. Drag it to one of the following Drill Paths boxes:

    • Up will display the destination as part of the Drill Up menu when the user right-clicks and selects Drill in a report. You can select any attribute or consolidation as the destination.

    • Down will display the destination as part of the Drill Down menu when the user right-clicks and selects Drill. You can select any attribute or consolidation as the destination.

    • Across will display as part of the Other Directions menu when the user right-clicks and selects Drill. You can select a hierarchy to use as the drill path, as well as an attribute or consolidation.

    • Template allows you to replace the template of the original report template with a completely different destination template.

    • Drill Map allows you to select an existing drill map as the destination. If Drill Map is not displayed, select View Drill Map Path List from the View menu.

    Alternatively, you can click one of the Drill Paths buttons and use the Select Destination Object dialog box.

  3. The Drill Path Display Name, which is displayed in the right-click drill menu on a report, is automatically filled in with the name of the destination object. You can either:

    • Use the object's name, by selecting the Use name of object check box.

    • Type a new display name in the box.

  4. Type a Drill Path Description of 250 characters or less.

  5. If desired, type a Set name. If any sets have been created, they are available on the pull-down list. A set groups drill paths together in the right-click Drill menu. Sets cannot cross drill types, so use them to group drill maps within a single drill type, such as Up.

  6. Select a Priority from the drop-down list:

    • Low displays the drill path as a right-click menu option in a MicroStrategy Developer report. In a MicroStrategy Web report, it can be accessed from the More Options link.

    • Medium displays the drill path as a right-click menu option in both MicroStrategy Developer and Web reports.

    • High displays the drill path as a right-click menu option in both MicroStrategy Developer and Web reports. In MicroStrategy Developer, this setting also creates the default drill path that is accessed when the user double-clicks an object in a report. In Web, this setting also creates the hyperlink drill that is accessed when the user clicks an object in a report.

  7. Apply user filter is set to True by default. The object selected to drill from is used as a filter on the drilled-to report. If you do not want the report created by drilling to be filtered by the selected object, select False.

  8. Apply report filter is set to True by default. The filter from the original report is applied to the drilled-to report. If you do not want the report created by drilling to use the original report's filter, select False.

  9. Include other filter is set to Default, which uses the report filter's advanced option setting to specify whether attribute qualifications are merged when metric qualifications in the new report are resolved. You can override the report filter setting by selecting one of the following:

    • To consider other qualifications, select Yes.

    • To ignore other qualifications, selectNo.

    The Include other filter property is available only if both Apply user filter and Apply report filter are set to True.

  10. Apply additional filter allows you to add a filter to the drilled-to report. To select the filter, click ... (the browse button). The Select additional filter dialog box opens. Navigate to and select the filter, and click Open.

  11. Keep page by is set to False by default. The drilled-to report is not grouped by the page by. To include page by on the drilled-to report, select True.

  12. Keep base template is set to False by default. The drilled-to report does not keep the original report's base template. To keep the base template, select True.

  13. The following options are available only if the drill path destination is not a template:

    1. Keep parent is set to False by default. The drilled-to report does not include the original object. To display the original object in the drilled-to report, select True.

    2. Keep thresholds is set to False by default. The drilled-to report does not display the thresholds of the original report. To display thresholds in the drilled-to report, select True.

    The Keep parent and Keep thresholds properties are overridden by the Keep parents while drilling and Keep thresholds while drilling options set in Report Data Options. The Report Data Options allow you to specify whether or not to display parents or thresholds for all drills in the report. To specify these properties at the drill path level, set the options in Report Data Options to Default. For detailed instructions, see Setting drilling options for a report.

  14. The following options are available only if the drill path destination is a template:

    1. Display mode is set to Default, which uses the original report's display setting. You can override the original report's setting and select the display mode from the drop-down list: Grid, Graph, or Grid graph (both a grid and a graph are displayed).

    2. Inherit VLDB is set to False by default. The VLDB properties of the original report are not applied to the drilled-to report. To apply the VLDB properties to the drilled-to report, select True.

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