What Is a Hierarchy?

A hierarchy is an arrangement of category columns that is based on parent-child relationships. The levels of a hierarchy are arranged with more general information at the top and more specific information at the bottom.

For example, you might create a hierarchy of date-time columns with Year as the top level, Month as the next level, and Day as the bottom level.

Creating hierarchies enables you to add drill-down functionality to your visualizations. For example, if you use a date-time hierarchy, you can drill down to the data for a specific year. Then, you can drill down to the data for a specific month.

When you drill down a hierarchy, a set of breadcrumb links at the top of your visualization enables you to drill back up the hierarchy.