KB8763: How to keep Drill Up and Drill Down drill paths and limit the list of hierarchies that appear in the 'Other Directions' drill menu in MicroStrategy Developer 9.4.1 and 10.x.

SYMPTOM:
In general, users require the Drill Up and Drill Down drill paths available to them; however, different user groups may require different hierarchies to appear under the 'Other Directions' drill menu.
 
Consider the example where a system has four system hierarchies namely, Time, Geography, Customer, and Product. For one group, administrators would like to allow users to see the Up, Down, and 'Other Directions' menu options, but limit the display under 'Other Directions' to the Time and Geography hierarchies. For all other users, they would like the same drill menu but under 'Other Directions', display only the Time, Customer and Product hierarchies. It is not possible to achieve the requirement above by simply implementing customized drill maps for the following reasons:

• If the administrator doesn't include default project drill maps when defining customized drill maps, users will lose the Up and Down menu options.
• If the administrator defines them to include default project drill maps, all drill-able hierarchies will be included.
• Disabling specific hierarchies so that they cannot be drilled upon will make them unavailable to all users.

To successfully implement this requirement, administrators must modify permissions on the hierarchy objects so that users only have access to those hierarchies they are allowed to see in their drill menu. To change user access to objects, right-click on an object and choose Properties. Next, select the Security tab and make modifications in the properties window.
 
For the example cited above, perform the following steps to make these modifications:

1. Deny the first group access to the Customer and Product hierarchies.
2. Deny all other users access to Geography.
3. Retain the default drill map.

Sometimes a user cannot drill to a hierarchy but should be able to browse elements in that hierarchy. Denying user access to the hierarchy makes browsing impossible. In this case, administrators can make a copy of system hierarchies, paste it under Data Explorer and give user access to the newly created hierarchies. Those hierarchies can now be used for browsing purpose.