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BI in SQL vNext

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Drill-through, actions & parameter passing - just make it work

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Paul Turley on 05 Feb 2015 01:56:52

A truly functional BI solution requires every dashboard, report or navigation UI to work together. This means that we need the ability to define actions and pass context information from one report interface to another - and there are far too many ways to do this in limited ways that don't work consistently across the products in the "integrated" BI arsenal.
In my perfect world, I define a cube action in SSAS (multi or Tabular) and that action gets surfaced in whatever reporting tool we choose to use (Excel/Excel Services, SSRS, Power View or Power BI dashboard). Through whatever action/parameter mechanism, the user is able to click, hover, hold and tap and use the action to navigate to another (SSRS/Excel/PV/web) report in the context of their filter and selection choices.

Comments (18)
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Chad Dotzenrod on 05 Jul 2020 22:17:26

RE: Drill-through, actions & parameter passing - just make it work

I've noticed that Tableau and Qlik partners like to club Power BI over the head on this one. Good start on the drill-down features but need drill-through!

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rahul on 05 Jul 2020 22:13:08

RE: Drill-through, actions & parameter passing - just make it work

how to do drill through in power BI

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Christopher Woodward on 05 Jul 2020 22:06:34

RE: Drill-through, actions & parameter passing - just make it work

Hopefully we see this soon. Very SOON!

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Mark on 05 Jul 2020 22:03:59

RE: Drill-through, actions & parameter passing - just make it work

I have to say Power BI is not a BI Solution at all - its a toy

There is no ability to define Hierarchies, have drill down on reports or drill through from one report to another

Microsoft really doesn't have a clue about BI

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Power BI User on 05 Jul 2020 22:02:09

RE: Drill-through, actions & parameter passing - just make it work

This is absolutely necessary for us to deploy our analytics through Power BI. Datazen has some of this capability and it's fairly primitive but at least they recognized the importance of it.

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Ahsan Khawaja on 05 Jul 2020 21:58:49

RE: Drill-through, actions & parameter passing - just make it work

it would be great to have this one working, seeing the underlying data along with the context of user analysis irrespective of how many dimensions are being used, all reporting products should be able to get the context and show respected underlying data, 3 Votes! Ahsan Khawaja

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Frank on 05 Jul 2020 21:58:12

RE: Drill-through, actions & parameter passing - just make it work

In SSAS Multidimensional we are defining actions with target type "all cells" and an "action expression" that builds an URL which contains the whole "context" of the cell as URL-parameters. In our case this URL opens a web-page of the Financial-Accounting System, which shows the underlying data. Our customers love this because they have a direct drill-through from an Excel-value to the underlying financial accounting data. It would be great if similar actions would work in SSAS tabular.

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Steve Powel on 05 Jul 2020 21:57:53

RE: Drill-through, actions & parameter passing - just make it work

Lets be honest just fixing the mess that is the drill through in SSAS MD right now would be a major step in the right direction. if judicious use of ASSP can fix the worst of the fallout why can't this just be baked into the product at a a minimum.