ReportViewer - LocalReport - Merge reports? - winforms

I'm using ReportViewer WinForms, and since it is no easy way to create an coversheet, then I wonder, is it possible to render two reports and have them concatenated?, so they appear as one report?
If I was to print only, then I could execute two reports after each other, but since the user want to see the report before printing (you know, no environment waste here) then they have to appear in the same viewer.
OR, is there other ways of creating coversheets?
Today I use an subreport, but there are some issues with margins etc. which is not easy to fix.
To clarify, we are talking about
ReportViewer using RDLC files, no
Crystal Reports involved.

Do you need to display the 2 reports as 1 in the reportViewer control or would having them both exported to PDF and showing a single PDF containing both reports be satisfactory?
I was looking for that but using the Web ReportViewer and found examples exporting the reports to several PDFs, then concatenating the PDFs into 1 using PDFtk (free)
Blog post about using PDFtk and Reporting Services
Multiple RDLC reports displayed at the same time
PDFtk web site

I've created a report that sounds like what you are attempting to do...first to clarify, I'm going to guess your using Crystal Reports within VS2005/2008.
If that's the case, all you need to do in the main report is create an additional section after your section that contains the "Cover Sheet" layout/data. In the section expert for the "Cover Sheet" section (in layout view, right click on section header bar, pick section expert in pop up menu..), check off the "New Page After" option.
Edit: After your update, I see you are using RDLC reports, and from my limited exposure to those, I can't recall an easy way to get to where you want to be. Though I'm pretty sure you may be able to pass multiple reports to the same report viewer in code.

Related

Items in Tool Box are grayed out - how to Enable them?

I'm trying to create my first report and I created a dataset and am trying to drag table from the toolbox. But it is grayed out. How to enable it? Any reason why it is happening like that?
You haven't actually created a new report. What you've done is create a project which can and often does contain many different reports. These projects can also contain many data sets and data sources. You can right-click the reports folder and create a new report which will enable those controls.

SSAS measure display folders do not show up

I'm developing a cube using the multidimensional model on the Sql Server 2014 Dev edition. Having quite a few measures in a single group I'm trying to organise them into display folders that doesn't work though for some reason. The defined display folders do not show up in any client - Visual Studio, SSMS, Excel, Power BI - you name it. Using VS I can see the defined folders in the properties window, on the translation tab, everywhere except the browser tab. And yes, the visibility attribute for the measures is set to True.
Please let me know if anybody came cross this and fixed.
As it turned out display folders will not appear unless you provide captions for the all added translations.

Any alternative report designers other than the traditional "banded" styles?

When I think of reports I think of banded reporting. Tools like Microsoft Access, Crystal Reports, SSRS and even VisualFox use this. Dynamic behavior must be anticipated in advance and is controlled through conditional fields, subreports and parameters. These reports are perfect for financial reports or lists of things where anytime you run this (typically between some date range) the look and feel is predetermined and expected by the user.
However our company requires a solution where any user should be able to change any aspects of the report. Fields, formatting and layout are all changed anytime a report is run. It's not a traditional "report" if you will since it's not a somewhat static output.
Resorting to banded reporting in this case would banish some developers to the world of crystal reports since we generate 2-6 reports on any given day. I can't imagine a typical user being happy with having to learn how to use crystal report designer either.
What are some alternative reporting solutions that allow you to build reports without being at the whim of learning an entire reporting suite such as Crystal Reports? I've added an answer of my own to show a great alternative that we're currently using and hope to get some good input for future use. The point of this post however is to collect some alternative solutions to the one proposed.
DevExpress Snap
With some digging we discovered DevExpress Snap which allows you to build reports using a Word Processor much like Microsoft Word by dragging fields from a fields toolbox right into the document! It feels exactly like Microsoft Word with data field drag and drop capabilities. Fantastic!
We've already created a Template structure so users can save their predetermined layouts as "general" templates to start work off of but nearly every report generated contains different fields and formatting. Sometimes even images are dropped into the document to illustrate a point.
Now I don't have to be banished to the land of SSRS! This is an amazing solution though I still generate certain reports (P&L for example) through SSRS since it should be a pre-set reporting style, with it's fields and design locked away from the user.
The other solution I found that looks pretty powerful and easy to use is Windward Autotag. It's an actual plug-in for Word that just adds an extra tab at the top of the ribbon for all your report options. So you can literally design all your reports right in Word. You put your data wherever you want by going to the Autotag tab added to the ribbon and clicking a button to insert your data where you want it. I haven't tried it yet, but the website and demo video look pretty impressive.

Render Excel Chart in WPF application

I have created couple of TFS Report in Excel by right clicking a query (Bugs query) and selecting "Create report in Microsoft excel" option. By doing this it has created a Graph.
I want to embed this Graph in WPF application.
As this is a dynamic report which will change in time as the numbers of bugs gets fixed during the day graph will change.
So it it possible for me to integrate a TFS report graph in to WPF application?
In essence you are asking how to embed excel in a wpf application like mentioned on http://www.codeproject.com/KB/office/Embedding_Excel.aspx.
However, using the reports and/or filling the wpf graphs using the tfs oom will be a lot faster to build an easier to maintain. It might even be wiser to just drop it on the SharePoint server (if it runs excel services) and serving it from the browser (instead of a wpf app) or as a dasboard.

SQL Server Reporting Services Custom Page Layouts

Would it be possible to define layouts depending on the report type? ie. The layout size for PDFs would be different from the web layout.
Let's say we publish the report to the web. The user has the option of exporting this custom report to PDF. We want to be able to specify how the report should look like when exported to PDF.
The layout has to be defined before the report is even rendered. The report has no advance knowledge of what form it is going to take when exported.
My advice is to either:
Create two separate reports with separate layouts depending on whether it is to become a PDF or a Webpage.
Tweak your layout so it will export nicely to both formats.

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