Drill-down — from a number to the rows behind it
Category | Reading a report |
|---|---|
Description | Click a number in a report to see the individual records behind it. |
Every cell of a pivot table is an aggregate: eleven issues, four hours, thirteen status changes. Drill-down opens the records that produced that number — the actual issues, worklog entries or changelog entries — without leaving the report or rebuilding it as a filter.
What you can click
Only data cells, and only in a table. A cell that can be drilled into is rendered in link blue and underlines on hover.
Clickable | Not clickable |
|---|---|
Cells of a Pivot table (vertical or horizontal) and of a Simple table, including the total row and column | Row and column headers; Bar, Pie and Doughnut charts; the Number visualisation; cells inside a subchart; empty cells |
Two states look clickable but are not, and each says why on hover: while the report is still calculating (Wait for the report to calculate), and when the cell has nothing behind it (No issues found, so drill-down isn’t available.).
What you land on depends on the measure
This is the part worth understanding before you click. Drill-down does not always show issues — it shows whatever the measure actually counted.
If the measure counts… | You land on | For example |
|---|---|---|
issues, or a field on them | Issues | Count of Issues, Sum of Original estimate, Sum of Story Points |
logged time | Worklogs — one row per worklog entry, with its duration, date, author and comment | Sum of Logged time |
changes in issue history | Changelogs — one row per history entry | Count of status changes, Time in Status, Time in Assignee |
When the answer is not issues, the menu offers both — and they answer different questions. From a logged-time cell, Drill down to worklogs lists the individual bookings that add up to the number; Drill down to issues lists the issues those bookings were made against. A third item, Open issue navigator, leaves the app entirely and opens the same issues in Jira’s own search in a new tab.
Reading the drilled-down view
The drill-down replaces the report with a table of the underlying records, and states its own provenance at the top:
Drilled down to issues that used to measure "Count of Issues" of intersection:
[Total] × [Project: Mobile Dev > Assignee: Mitch Davis]Value 11
Read the second line as the coordinates of the cell you clicked: the column path, then the row path, with nested groupings joined by >. An axis with no grouping shows as Total. The Value line repeats the number you clicked, so you can check that the rows below add up to it.
Drill-down only ever goes one level deep. Cells inside the drilled-down table are not themselves clickable — you are already looking at individual records.
Only the records that contributed
A changelog or worklog drill-down lists the issues that actually produced the number, not every issue in the intersection. Drill into a Count of status changes cell on a row of fifty issues and you may see twelve — the other thirty-eight never changed status. That is correct, and it is the point: the drill-down explains the measure, not the row.
Bringing context along
Two toggles sit above the drilled-down table. Both are off by default.
Toggle | What it adds | Turn it on when |
|---|---|---|
Show parent table groups | The dimensions of the report you came from, as extra columns | You are going to export the rows, or you drilled into a total and want to see which group each record belongs to |
Show parent table cell content | The measures of the report you came from, one column each, calculated per record | You want to see how each record contributes — which of the eleven issues carries the estimate, which worklog is the long one |
Neither toggle is saved with the report. They reset to off every time you open a drill-down, including the next one in the same session.
What you can and cannot do while drilled in
Works | Does not |
|---|---|
Export to CSV or Excel — and it exports the drilled-down rows, not the report you came from Sorting the drilled-down table by any column Saving the report, which also closes the drill-down Opening any issue in the list | Configuration. The panel is greyed out behind an Return to report view to modify configuration. banner Refresh Save as…, which is hidden Switching between view and edit mode |
Sorting is local to the drill-down and is discarded when you leave it — it never changes the saved report.
Things that surprise people
The drilled-down table has no totals. Count the rows against the Value line instead.
A list report drills into a table. Whatever the report looked like, the drill-down is always a table.
It does not go back to Jira. The drill-down works on the data the report already had when you clicked, which is why Refresh is switched off. If the report is showing a cached result, drill-down waits until it is recalculated.
A cell reading 0 opens an empty menu. There is nothing to drill into, but the menu still appears.
On a dashboard
Drill-down works the same in the dashboard gadget: the same cells, the same menu, the same overlay, the same two toggles, and export rebinds to the drilled-down rows exactly as it does in the app. The differences are that there is no configuration panel to grey out and no Save, so Back to report is the way out.