Drill Anywhere Options: "Drill To" vs "Go To"

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1 . Abstract

The Drill Functions provide several interactive options, which are: Drill anywhere, Drill-down, Drill-to screen, Drill-procedure.

In design mode, interacting with the ‘Drill-to screen’ feature, either in a Data View or in a Chart, there are some notable differences regarding ‘Drill-to screen’ and ‘Go-to screen’ options.

Both functions provide flexibility to the user in integration and screen navigation, but based on the differences, the user can choose the best option to use.

2 . Content

2.1 Drill-to screen

The Drill-to screen mode opens a screen with a selection, which is a combination of the original screen select and the entity tuple being drilled.

In general, you want to consider using the Drill-to screen, which allows users to move from a dashboard that gives an at-a-glance summary of high-level performance to drill to a particular point of interest potentially and open up a whole new dashboard designed specifically for proper analysis at that level.

Typically, the ‘drill’ screen is opened in a separate tab to allow the user to compare the opening dashboard data with the drilling data and easily drill a new tuple if necessary.

If a Drill-to screen has been configured on the Data View, double-click on a row header or a cell case to follow the drill path from the Data View to another screen of the current capsule, whereas if you are interacting with a Chart, double-click on a data point or select it with a single click and click the Drill-down icon to follow the drill path from the Chart to another screen of the current capsule.

Depending on the Drill-to screen configuration, the destination Screen will open with:

• A selection based on the entity member selected or double-clicked in the Data View.
• A selection based on the row and column item corresponding to the cell selected or double-clicked in the Data View.
• A selection based on the source data point in the Chart.
• No inherited selection.

The ‘Drill Anywhere configuration’ area is where you want to set up the ‘Drill-to screen’ mode and it looks as follows:

In the example below when the user double clicks on a row header ‘Salaries & Benefits’ line of the P&L Report, the selection is taken to GL Account Report carrying over even the original selections made in the P&L Report.

Therefore, on the GL Account Report, users would view data just for those GL Accounts that belong to the “Salaries & Benefits” P&L Report line item for the IT Cost Center for August 2021.

You can also configure a Drill-to screen from a cell case from the layout editor.

To do this, select the data view and open the layout editor, click on settings in the object preview panel to open the object properties panel and under the column appearance menu select the pencil icon to configure a Drill-to screen on one or more data blocks.

By doing as mentioned above, in analogy to the previous example, but instead of double-click on the row header ‘Salaries & Benefits‘, the user double clicks on a cell case, which is the combination of ‘Salaries & Benefits’ and ‘August 2021’, which produces the following result:

The ‘Drill-to screen’ mode can be combined with the ‘Dynamic Screen’ option, which dynamically redirects navigation to different screens.

This option allows to select of a block formula, an algorithm in the Data View, to dynamically change the Screen navigation based on another block value, a text cube containing screen names.

The ‘dynamic screen’ is available only for the cell case option and is configurable in the Data View properties below the column appearance menu.

This feature is useful to grant more flexibility to the user experience, for example by guiding navigation according to a binomial variable (0 or 1), e.g. whether the workflow status is open or closed.

2.2. Go To Screen

The ‘Go to screen’ mode opens the destination screen when the user double-clicks on a cell of a configured block or selects it and clicks on the drill-down icon.

The destination Screen will not inherit any selection from the Data View.

The ‘Go to Screen’ mode/option allows users to navigate from the current screen to the destination screen without carrying over the selections.

The ‘Go to Screen’ option is available in the Drill Anywhere configuration window where you choose the go-to screen mode.

Also, the ‘Go to screen’ mode can be combined with the ‘Dynamic Screen’ option only for the cell case option and is configurable in the Data View properties below the column appearance menu.

Differently from the ‘Drill-to’ option, when a user navigates from one screen to the destination screen using the ‘Go to screen’ mode he/she can clear/reset the entity selection through pagers/selectors.

3. Conclusion

In conclusion, we can summarize the two options as follows:

Drill to Screen	Go to Screen
This mode is useful if the requirement is to go to another screen with more detailed/granular data than the source screen.	This mode is useful if the requirement is to simply navigate between screens without overwriting screen selections on the destination screen.
This mode can also be combined with the “Dynamic Screen” option where the screen navigation would be determined by the outcome of a column algorithm block. In this instance, the selection of the entities by row/column in the layout would be carried over to the destination screen.	This mode can also be combined with the “Dynamic Screen” option where the screen navigation would be determined by the outcome of a column algorithm block. However, in this instance, the selection of the entities by row/column in the layout would not be carried over to the destination screen.
All Selections from the source screen are carried over to the destination screen thereby overwriting the selections on the destination screen. If this mode is configured on data view cells, then the selection of the combination of the entities by row and/or column will also be carried to the destination screen.	Selections are not carried over when the user navigates from the source to the destination screen. Can be combined with the “Apply Data Selection” property for selections to be carried over from the source screen to the destination screen.
Restricts users from resetting entity selections through selectors and pagers. Users will need access to the screen selection window to reset entity selections or developers need to create procedures that can reset/remove the entity selections.	Allows users to reset entity selections through selectors and pagers. However, resetting entity selection is not possible if the “Go to Screen” navigation is combined with the “Apply Data Selection” property.
Available in objects which have the Drill Anywhere Configuration property.	Available in objects that have the Drill Anywhere Configuration property as well as objects such as button, label, and capsule procedures.

Center of Excellence

Thanks, @Abhilash Sachidananda for the insights on this article!