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About Drilldowns

Drilldowns allow users to click a hyperlink in a field and be taken to another view that displays more information about the field. Drilldowns are used primarily in list applets. The drilldown object is a child object of applet. Drilldown behavior is not supported on MVG applets, pick applets, or association applets.

Drilldowns can be either static or dynamic. A static drilldown always takes the user to the same view. A dynamic drilldown takes the user to different views, depending on certain conditions, such as the value of a field.

Consider the following about drilldown behavior:

• If the driving applet of a view has a search specification, this search specification is also applied to the destination view when drilling down. For more information, see Setting Applet Search Specifications.
• If the target view of a drilldown object has a different visibility type from the original view, drilling down on a cell will take the user to the first record of the destination view and not to the drilldown record.

Static Drilldowns

Static Drilldowns take users to the same view under all circumstances. Figure 67 displays the property relationships between a list applet, business component, and view in a static drilldown configuration.

Figure 67.  Static Drilldown Configuration

Dynamic Drilldowns

Dynamic drilldown enables hyperlink navigation to multiple views from the same hyperlink field, depending on the value of a field in the applet's current record.

This is useful in the situation where special processing is desired for various types of contacts, opportunities, accounts, and so on. The business component may have a field that indicates a classification, such as the Lead Quality for an opportunity or the primary Industry for an account. The drilldown behavior can be to check this field in the current record, and navigate to different views for different values found there.

Dynamic drilldown behavior for a hyperlink field (and the corresponding list column or control) is configured with one or more Dynamic Drilldown Destination child object definitions of the Drilldown Object. This is illustrated in Figure 68.

Figure 68.  Dynamic Drilldown Configuration Details

As in a static drilldown configuration, the Drilldown Object object definition identifies a hyperlink field and a view. These property settings continue to have the same purpose in dynamic drilldown, namely to specify the list column or control that has hyperlink capabilities, and the destination view when the hyperlink is clicked.

However, for dynamic drilldowns, you define Drilldown objects for each candidate view. The Drilldown object with the lowest sequence number contains child Dynamic Drilldown Destination objects that are used to define the conditions under which each of the Drilldown objects should be activated. When the conditions defined in a Dynamic Drilldown Destination are matched, the logic routes to one of the candidate Drilldown objects. When all conditions expressed in the Dynamic Drilldown Destinations are false, the parent Drilldown object acts as the default.

For example, the Industry field in the Account business component could be designated as the type field in a list of Dynamic Drilldown Destinations. When the Industry value is "Manufacturing," the drilldown could route to a Drilldown Object with a view tailored for manufacturing accounts. When the value is "Transportation," the destination could be a different Drilldown Object and view, and so on.

The list of Dynamic Drilldown Destinations contained in a Drilldown Object specifies a set of criteria, of which any number may be met. If the condition in one Dynamic Drilldown Destination is met, the hyperlink routes to the specified Drilldown Object. If more than one is met, the first encountered (as specified in the Sequence property) specifies the destination Drilldown Object. If none is met (or no Dynamic Drilldown Destination object definitions are supplied as children of the Drilldown Object), the Drilldown Object itself supplies the name of the destination view.

Be careful to avoid routing hyperlinks from one dynamically evaluated Drilldown Object to another. That is, if you create Dynamic Drilldown Destination children of a Drilldown Object, do not have them route to a Drilldown Object that itself has Dynamic Drilldown Destination children. This practice could lead to ambiguity or looping.

If multiple drilldown objects for the applet are defined, a given field in the business component should be mentioned only once for all available drilldown objects. For a dynamic drilldown, the drilldown object that contains the dynamic drilldown destinations should have the Hyperlink Field property set.