It’s not a big mystery. The Drill Down Analyzer is one of the most popular features in TimeControl. To be fair, there are many features that are often mentioned by users when talking about TimeControl including the remarkable level of flexibility or the integrations already included or that can be created inside the product but once those features are configured; once the flexibility has been taken advantage of to configure TimeControl; those things fall into the background of every day operations.

The Drill Down Analyzer is the most popular go-to feature for administrators who work with TimeControl regularly.

So what is it?

The Drill Down Analyzer is a spreadsheet-like reporting mechanism that allows the user to create multiple definitions of fields called Views and then display that data based on any filter desired. There is no limit to the number of Drill Down Analyzer Views that can be created and TimeControl even allows for those Views to be either public or private to keep the number of them under control.

The user then selects a View, clicks Load and then takes advantage of any appropriate filter defined in the product. That can include a dynamic filter such as “Select a Project” where the user then selects a project or selects a range of dates or any other definition that you wish to constrain the data by. The Drill Down Analyzer then loads all the fields in the View.

But that’s just the start.

Just like many spreadsheet views, the Drill Down Analyzer will happily sort the View by clicking on any column header. Much more fun is to drag a column header to the Sub-total bar and instantly all the data is grouped and sub-totaled by that field. Drag a second field up and there are now Groupings, sub-groupings and sub-totals. Drag a third field and, yes – you guessed it, there are now groupings, sub-groupings and sub-sub-groupings with sub totals.

This is a stunningly powerful feature.

An end-user can use the grouping and filtering of data to answer some questions that might have taken ages. “This year, how many hours were spent on internal non-billable meetings by the technical staff?” That could be a few days of work if done manually or hours of work in most other systems. Using the Drill Down Analyzer, it’s a list of posted data that probably doesn’t even need to defined as it’s used all the time, select a range of dates when loading then group by internal (a user defined charge field) and billable (another user defined charge field) and you’ve got your answer in seconds, not hours.

As with all things TimeControl, the Drill Down Analyzer is always compliant with data security based on the User Profile so you don’t have any risk of seeing something you’re not supposed to see. It’s a remarkable feature and it’s a TimeControl Admin favorite.