How to Edit an Existing Report

Existing Report files can be copied and changed to create new reports.

Report feature documentation

The report viewer report engine supports a lot of different features that can be used to make the reports look good and server there purpose.

We will name a few of them to give you some ideas on what can be done and direct you to the MSDN documentation appropriate for each feature.

Groups

In a tablix you can have row and column groups to group data and choose whether the groups are collapsible or not. This can come in handy when you usually only want to view summarized data but want to be able to drill down if needed.

Documentation on how to Filter, Group, and Sort Data

Expressions

Expressions can be created for data in cells and text boxes. They can be used for formatting and displaying different data based on some condition.

Expressions overview

Documentation on expression uses in reports

Report data

In the Report data section you can view the parameters and datasets used in the report. To open the Report data panel if it is not visible select View > Report data from the Visual studio menu or press Ctrl+Alt+D. From this panel you can modify parameters and remove and add new datasets.

Localization

If you are creating a report for a specific language you need to be careful to select the correct language in both report files.

In the Report manifest file (.rpdsc) you set the language code in the LanguageID section and in the Report file (.rdlc) the language needs to be set in the Report parameters (see point 14 in the create report description).

You can import the same report in several languages but then you need to remember to give them the same ReportID in the Report manifest file.

Example reports

In the development pack you can find several report examples and there is also a Report section in the online help where there are more examples of reports created for older versions.

 

Things to be aware of when editing reports

There are a few things that you need to be aware of when editing report files.

  • The report file being edited must be included in the dev pack project. If not it can get the wrong meta data information and become unusable.
  • If you change the stored procedure of an already existing report without changing the output you do not need to modify the .rpdsc file but if you add a new column to the output you need to delete the dataset associated with the old stored procedure, run the creation script on a LS One database and then re-add the new dataset (with the new field) to the .rpdsc file.
  • If you change the parameters in the stored procedure you need to make sure you change them in the Report file (.rdlc) file as well.
  • All reports must have a unique guid ID otherwise they will overwrite the report with the same ID when imported into the Site Manager.