The drill-down feature allows authorized users to view the underlying data that was used to generate a report. This generally includes information beyond what is displayed in the report. In conjunction with the Data Docs information embedded in the Report Description tab, the drill-down view can be useful to help understand the report, to validate that it is showing you the information you expected, or to quickly get an additional piece of information.

 

NOTE: Drill-down is not designed to be a full ad-hoc query tool to extract any conceivable piece of information on a topic. To view individual records, you will need to:

• Click on a cell in the report.
• Click on the View Data icon on the right-hand side of the box that appears.
• Click on the Full data tab in the new window.
• Click on the Show fields box. 

What is included and not included in the drill-down view?

Drill-down includes two sets of information. All users can view and download a summary of the fields they selected. Authorized users only can access a second tab of information called "Full Data" that displays all the underlying data that was used to generate the report, beyond what is displayed on the report.

Notes:

• The drill-down view only shows you information for the fields, columns, or rows you selected. 
• The Full Data view is not filtered by college, department, or other criteria. If you have access to student data, for example, you will be able to see the underlying student data for a given report for the entire university in the Full Data view.
• The Full Data view does not include every conceivable piece of information on a particular topic. For example, if student names were not needed to generate a particular report, student names may not appear in the full view.
• You may need to click Show fields  in the Full Data view to see additional information.

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If there is particular data that you feel would be useful in a drill-down view,  contact reportsupport@umd.edu. For example, Name is a commonly requested field that users like to use to scan for when reviewing the underlying data, even when it is not displayed in the report itself.

Note: The drill-down view is not designed to be a full ad-hoc query tool, and not all relevant information can be included in the drill-down view.

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What do the field prefixes mean in the Full Data view?

Most fields use the name drawn from the original warehouse field. In addition, the following prefixes are used:

• TXT_ – This prefix indicates that the field was typed in directly by the report writer, and not drawn from any system.
• CALC_ – This prefix indicates that the field is calculated by the report writer based on other data.

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Drill Down vs. View Data in Tableau

Due to an unfortunate naming coincidence, Tableau also has a feature called "Drill Down" that allows you to split a year heading, for example, into quarters, and quarters into months. This is generally not recommended, as it can crowd too many columns into a report that was only designed to show 5-10 year columns at a time, and may show date slices that do not have any data associated with them.