Using Drill-Down Charts in Data Studio

If you use Google Analytics for reporting and analysis, you are likely used to clicking on a row in a report to drill down into a dimension. For example, you can click on Country to drill down to City, or click on Event Category to drill down to Event Action, or click on Campaign to drill down to Source/Medium. Drill-down is an effective way to quickly analyze a segment of your users, campaigns, or site interactions.

In this post, we’ll show you how to bring drill-down functionality to your Data Studio reports as well!

How to Use Drill-Down Charts in Data Studio

1. Create a chart

Create a new chart or use an existing chart in your report.

(The drill-down feature is supported in most standard Data Studio charts. There is no drill down for scorecards and bullet charts, as these chart types don’t use dimensions. Geo maps support drill down as long as the dimensions used are compatible with the selected zoom area.)

2. Enable Drill down

In the data panel of your chart, you will see a drill-down toggle button in the dimension section. Click on the toggle button to enable Drill down.

3. Configure Drill-down dimensions

Once enabled, drill down allows you to add more dimensions to your chart. List the dimensions in order from most broad to most specific. For example: Continent > Country > City; or Event Category > Event Action > Event Label.

Next, select the default drill-down level, which is the dimension level that displays automatically when your report is viewed. So, you don’t always have to start at the highest level. Viewers will be able to drill up or down from the default level, as determined by the hierarchy that you define.

4. Use drill down in charts

In view mode, drill-down controls are available in the chart header or via the right click menu. For ease of use, you may wish to set chart headers to “Always Show” when drill down is enabled.

In the chart header, click the respective arrow to drill up or down a level in the hierarchy. To drill into a specific dimension value, first click on the bar or row to select it. Then click the down arrow to drill down to the next level.

Try out the drill-down feature in this sample dashboard: