How to Create a Drill Down Dashboard in Tableau

Building a dashboard in Tableau that only shows high-level information is a missed opportunity. To make your reports truly useful, you need to give your users a way to explore the data themselves, moving from a broad overview to the specific details that answer their questions. This is done with a drill-down dashboard. This article will walk you through, step by step, how to build a dynamic drill-down dashboard in Tableau that lets users seamlessly navigate through layers of their data.

What is a Drill Down Dashboard and Why Bother?

A drill-down dashboard lets you start with a summarized view of your data and then, with a simple click, reveal more granular layers of information. It's like looking at a map of a country, then clicking a region to see its states, and clicking a state to see its cities. Instead of creating three separate dashboards, you create one interactive experience.

Making your dashboards interactive this way has several clear benefits:

• It Reduces Clutter: You can present a clean, simple summary first. Users only see the detailed data when they actively seek it out, which prevents them from being overwhelmed by too many charts and numbers on a single screen.
• It Empowers End-Users: Instead of asking you for a new report every time they have a follow-up question, executives, managers, and analysts can self-serve. They can answer their own "why" questions by digging into the numbers without needing to know a single thing about how Tableau works.
• It Can Improve Performance: By loading aggregated summary data first, the initial dashboard render time can be significantly faster. The more resource-intensive, granular data is only queried when a user specifically requests it by clicking.

The Core Concepts: Hierarchies and Actions

Before building, it's helpful to understand the two core Tableau features that make drill-down functionality possible: hierarchies and actions. Mastering these two elements is the key to building all sorts of interactive reports.

Understanding Hierarchies

A hierarchy is a logical arrangement of your data fields from the most general level to the most specific. Tableau uses these hierarchies to understand how your data is related. Think about a time hierarchy, for example:

Year > Quarter > Month > Day

Or a geographic hierarchy:

Region > State/Province > City > Postal Code

When you place a hierarchy field on a worksheet, Tableau adds a small "+" icon to the pill. Users can click this icon to manually drill down to the next level in the hierarchy right within that single chart. While this is a form of drilling down, our goal is to use selections on one chart to reveal an entirely new chart with the next level of detail.

How to Create a Hierarchy in Tableau

Creating a hierarchy is incredibly simple. In the Data pane on the left side of your screen:

1. Click and hold the most specific field (e.g., 'City').
2. Drag it directly on top of the next field up in the hierarchy (e.g., 'State').
3. A dialog box will appear asking you to name the hierarchy. Name it something descriptive, like "Geography."
4. Now drag the next highest level (e.g., 'Region') and drop it into your newly created "Geography" hierarchy. Make sure you order them correctly from top to bottom (most general to most specific).

That's it. Tableau now understands the relationship between these fields, which is crucial for our next step.

Understanding Dashboard Actions

Dashboard Actions are the engine of interactivity in Tableau. They allow you to create connections where an action a user takes on one worksheet (the source sheet) triggers a change on another worksheet (the target sheet). For our purpose, the most important type is the Filter Action.

A Filter Action takes the data points you select on the source sheet and uses them as a filter for the target sheet. For example, if you click on the "West" region bar in a regional sales chart, a Filter Action can automatically filter a state sales chart to show you only the states within the West region.

Step-by-Step Guide: Building a Sales Drill Down Dashboard

Let's build a functional drill-down dashboard using the "Sample - Superstore" dataset that comes packaged with Tableau. Our goal is to create a dashboard where a user can see total sales by region, click a region to see sales by state, and then click a state to see sales by city.

Step 1: Get Your Data Ready

First, open Tableau and connect to the "Sample - Superstore" data source. In the Data pane, find the geographic fields: 'Region', 'State', and 'City'. Your first task is to build them into a hierarchy as described above. Create a hierarchy named "Location" with the order: 'Region' > 'State' > 'City'.

Step 2: Build the High-Level (Region) Worksheet

This is our starting point. It will show the highest level of aggregation.

1. Create a new worksheet and name it "Sales by Region."
2. Drag the Region field from your new hierarchy to the Rows shelf.
3. Next, drag the Sales measure to the Columns shelf.
4. A simple bar chart will appear. Click the sort icon in the toolbar to sort it descending, so your top-performing regions are at the top.

You now have your parent-level view.

Step 3: Build the Mid-Level (State) Worksheet

Now, let's create the chart a user will see after they click a region.

1. Create a second worksheet and name it "Sales by State."
2. Just like before, drag the State field to the Rows shelf.
3. Drag the Sales measure to the Columns shelf.
4. Sort the results descending to easily see the top states.

Step 4: Build the Detailed (City) Worksheet

Finally, we'll create our most granular view.

1. Create a third worksheet and name it "Sales by City."
2. Drag the City field to the Rows shelf.
3. Drag the Sales measure to the Columns shelf.
4. Sort the chart descending.

Step 5: Assemble the Dashboard

With our three worksheets built, it's time to bring them together into a single view.

1. Create a new Dashboard.
2. From the Sheets list on the left, drag "Sales by Region" and drop it onto the main canvas. This will be your primary chart.
3. Now, drag "Sales by State" and place it to the right of or below the region chart.
4. Finally, drag "Sales by City" and place it next to the state chart. You can arrange them in columns or rows, whatever layout you prefer. At this point, the state and city charts will look very busy because they are displaying all values. Don't worry, we'll fix that now.

Step 6: Configure the Dashboard Actions

This is where the magic happens. We will set up two filter actions to connect our three worksheets.

Action 1: Region to State

1. From the top menu, navigate to Dashboard > Actions...
2. In the pop-up window, click the Add Action > button and choose Filter...
3. Configure the action as follows:
4. Click OK to save this first action.

Action 2: State to City

1. While still in the Actions window, click Add Action >, Filter... again.
2. Configure the second action:
3. Click OK, and then click OK again to close the Actions window.

Step 7: Test Your Interactive Dashboard!

Your drill-down dashboard is now complete. Try it out:

• Initially, you should only see the "Sales by Region" chart clearly. The other two should be blank.
• Click on a bar in the region chart (e.g., 'West'). Notice how the 'Sales by State' chart instantly populates, showing only the states within the West region. The city chart is still empty.
• Now, click on a bar in the 'Sales by State' chart (e.g., 'California'). The 'Sales by City' chart will now display all the cities within California.
• To go back up, simply click the state you originally selected ('California'). The city chart will disappear. To go up another level, click the region you originally selected ('West'). Both detail charts will now be hidden.

Expert Tips for Better Drill Down Dashboards

Once you've mastered the basics, here are a few ways to enhance your drill-down dashboards:

• Use Dynamic Titles: Make your chart titles more informative. For example, on the 'Sales by State' worksheet, edit the title to be "Sales by State for <Region>". Now when you click a region, the title will update automatically, like "Sales by State for West".
• Keep It Simple: Avoid going too many levels deep. Three or four levels are usually plenty for a business user. Any more than that and navigation can become confusing. The goal is clarity, not complexity.
• Create Clear "Back" Buttons: For an even clearer user experience, you can create a worksheet that looks like a "Reset" or "Back" button. Then, you can use another filter action linked to this button that deselects all marks on a sheet, effectively resetting the view of an entire dashboard.

Final Thoughts

Ultimately, learning to build a drill-down dashboard in Tableau is about using the powerful combination of data hierarchies and dashboard filter actions. This technique transforms a static report into an interactive and intuitive tool that empowers business users to explore their data and uncover insights on their own, all without overwhelming them with unnecessary detail.

While Tableau is an incredibly powerful tool, mastering its features to build sophisticated dashboards often requires significant time and training. We built Graphed because we believe getting insights from your data shouldn't demand such a steep learning curve. Instead of manually stitching together worksheets and configuring actions, you can simply ask for what you need in plain English - like "create a drill-down dashboard of sales by region, then state, then city" - and get a live, interactive dashboard in seconds, with all your data sources connected and updated automatically.