DEV Community: BarbraWeke

The Necessity of Interactive Reports

BarbraWeke — Mon, 07 Aug 2023 09:40:08 +0000

An increasing number of organizations are implementing technology in their businesses and need to strategically communicate relevant information through interactive reports. In essence, an interactive report should easily integrate data from sources such as files, databases, and cloud applications, and they should allow users to independently perform deeper analysis and create custom reports on demand. This article describes the necessity of interactive reports.

Content

1. What are interactive reports?
2. Why choose interactive reports?
3. How to perform interactive analysis using Bold Reports
4. Conclusion

What are interactive reports?

An interactive report is a comprehensive business intelligence solution that includes dynamic multidimensional analysis and reporting. Interactive reports provide top-to-bottom analysis, including all business information. These features allow end users to create highly customizable reports. An organization’s end users will always be able to customize a report’s layout by exposing specific columns, applying filters, sorting, and highlighting.

Interactive reports easily integrate data sources and reduce an organization’s development time with a rich point-and-click interface.

Why choose interactive reports?

Interactive reports support real-time analysis. You can drill down in a report to the lowest level of data to view the root cause of the visual outcome.

Ultimately, the consumer can always construct a report using interactive sorting. You can set multiple fields with sorting and filtering functionality so the report can be interacted with anytime
Interactive reports allow users to drill into the data that interests them by expanding and collapsing sections within a report.
Interactive reports specify the data to use in a report, connect related reports, and control report presentation.

How to perform interactive analysis using Bold Reports

To display data and information in detail, Bold Reports supports SQL RDL reporting’s extremely powerful interactive features, such as drilling through, drilling down, interactive sorting, bookmarks or anchors, document maps, and hyperlinks.

1. Drilling through reports
Drilling through allows end users to click on data values in a report to view related data in child reports. Small or large organizations can have detailed data in separate child reports, and they can pass parameters to filter and display data when an end-user clicks a link.

2. Drill-down reports
Drill-down reports, also known as toggle items, have options that let your end users view sections of a report by expanding and collapsing them at runtime. You can show or hide static rows and columns associated with groups in a table or matrix (pivot table). You can also use a subreport or nested data-region report items to show detailed records.

3. Hyperlinks
A user can click to open external web pages in a browser window that shows a static or dynamic URL’s value expression. Using Bold Report Designer, you can allow an end user to use hyperlink actions in text boxes, images, charts, and gauges. The hyperlink can contain a data field or other expression.

4. Document map
The document map displays a separate side pane or table of contents (TOC) next to the report. Clicking a link in the document map jumps to the respective report page. All document map items of the report sections and table groups are arranged in a hierarchy of links.

Document Map

5. Bookmarks or anchors
A bookmark allows end users to click on data values to navigate to specific content while viewing reports easily and exporting documents. Bookmarks are supported in text boxes, tables, maps, images, charts, and gauges.

6. Interactive sorting
Table report items are displayed with sort icons in a column header or group header cell, enabling a user to sort or reverse the sort order of a column. A large or small business can specify sorting criteria for groups, rows, or columns. You can also combine fields into a single group expression.

7. Nested data regions
You can visualize reports with nested data regions by placing charts, maps, gauges, and indicators inside another data region to display data and information in detail.

Nested data regions

Conclusion

In conclusion, the necessity of interactive reports in today’s data-driven world cannot be overstated. As businesses face ever-increasing volumes of information, static and traditional reports fall short in delivering the insights required for making critical decisions. Interactive reports, on the other hand, provide a dynamic and engaging experience, enabling users to explore data, uncover patterns, and gain a deeper understanding of complex datasets.

To explore more, look through our demo samples and documentation site. If you have any questions, please post them in the comments section. You can also contact us through our contact page, or if you already have an account, you can log in to ask your support question.

Bold Reports offers a 15-day free trial without any credit card information required. We welcome you to start a free trial and experience Bold Reports. Try it, and let us know what you think!

Preparing a Reporting Solution on Linux: A Comprehensive Guide

BarbraWeke — Tue, 25 Jul 2023 13:53:06 +0000

Companies depend on strong reporting solutions to get valuable information from their vast volumes of data. That’s where Bold Reports Report Server comes in. It’s a powerful tool for generating reports and has advanced features for analyzing and visualizing data, which help businesses make smart choices. This tool can work on different operating systems, providing an important amount of flexibility over other reporting solutions.

This guide will help you install the Bold Reports Report Server on Linux and embed reporting tools into your application.

Prerequisites

Hardware requirements
To ensure a smooth installation, your hardware should meet the following requirements

A CPU with a minimum of 4 cores.
At least 16 GB of RAM.
Disk space of 5 GB or more.

Software requirements

On the software side, you’ll need the following components:

A database such as Microsoft SQL Server 2012 (or a newer version) or PostgreSQL.
The Nginx web server for
Any modern web browser: Microsoft Edge, Mozilla Firefox, or Google Chrome.
Ubuntu 20.04 LTS operating system.

Deployment process

I will walk you through the deployment process using the Ubuntu system connected via Git Bash, which is a command-line interface (CLI) tool for Windows that provides a Unix-like environment. We will be utilizing Git Bash with sudo privileges to ensure we have the necessary administrative permissions. Let’s get started

Step 1: Install the necessary dependencies

To start the process, we’ll need to install Nginx, which is a widely used web server software. This software is necessary for hosting our application.
The first command we need to run will download the most recent package lists and update the local package cache:

sudo apt-get update

Once the package lists have been updated, we can install Nginx by running the following command:

sudo apt-get install nginx

Bold Reports relies on a component called System Drawing to accurately measure text and process images within reports. To enable this functionality, we need to install the libgdiplus

sudo apt-get install libgdiplus

Step 2: Download and extract Bold Reports

In this step, we’ll download the latest Bold Report Server Linux package.You can download it from your Bold Reports accounts or by running the following command:

sudo wget 
https://s3.amazonaws.com/files2.syncfusion.com/Installs/Bold/BoldReports/v<version_number>/BoldReports_EnterpriseReporting_Linux.zip

After the download is finished, we need to extract the contents of the downloaded zip file. To do this, we need to install the zip tool. Execute the following command to install it:

sudo apt-get install zip

Once the zip tool is installed, extract the downloaded file by running the unzip command:

sudo unzip BoldReports_EnterpriseReporting_Linux.zip

Step 3: Deploy the Report Server

To change your current working directory to , use the following command:

cd BoldReports-EnterpriseReporting-Linux

To deploy the Report Server, we’ll utilize shell scripts with helpful bash comments that will guide us through the installation process. The bash command offers various options that we can customize:

The -i option determines whether the installation is new or upgraded. In our case, it’s a new installation.
The -u option allows us to specify which user or group has control over the service and its files. We’ll set it as root.
The -h option enables us to define the domain or IP address. For this setup, we’ll use the IP address.
The -n option simplifies the configuration of Bold Reports by automatically setting it up with an Nginx front-end server. We’ll set this option to true.

sudo bash install-boldreports.sh -i {new} -u {user} -h {host URL} -n {true or false}

Run the following command to start the deployment:

sudo bash install-boldreports.sh -i new -u root -h http://52.152.238.121 -n true

Step 4: Set up SSL for a secure connection (optional)

If you’re looking to set up the Report Server with a domain and establish a secure connection, you’ll need to configure the SSL information. Follow these steps to do so:

Open the boldreports-ngnix-config file located inside /etc/nginx/sites-available in the Vim editor:

sudo vim /etc/nginx/sites-available/boldreports-nginx-config

To customize your domain name, you’ll need to uncomment the highlighted lines.
Replace “example.com” with your domain name.
Additionally, make sure to comment out any irrelevant lines that are not needed for your configuration.
Provide the file paths for the certificate and key. These files are essential for enabling secure connections to your application.

To ensure the syntax of the configuration file is correct, you can use the following command to verify it:

sudo nginx -t

Once you have confirmed that the syntax is correct, you can reload Nginx’s configuration files by executing the following command:

sudo nginx -s reload

It’s important to restart all the necessary services. You can accomplish this by running the following command.

sudo systemctl restart bold-*.service

Step 5: Start the Report Server

Open the Report Server in a browser using the IP address used for the deployment. The application startup page will open.

Activate the Bold Reports account either by using online credentials or by uploading the offline unlock key.

If you’re going to use the offline unlock key, you can download it from your Bold Reports accounts page and upload it.

For this setup, we are activating our account using online credentials. Configure the administrator user by entering the user information and password, and then click Next.

Step 6: Configure the database for storing Report Server data

Choose a database to store the reports. Database options include SQL Server, PostgreSQL, and For this setup, we will use PostgreSQL. Provide the necessary information in the required.

Fill in the required fields with the information for the new database. In this case, the database name is boldserviceslinux.
Select the Enable SSL option to establish a secure connection using SSL and click Next. The report tenant deployment will begin and run in the background.

Step 7: Add sample reports

After the deployment, click to be redirected to the . You will find sample reports available with the Report Server. Let’s explore them by clicking Explore in the Report Samples pop-up box.

By clicking the button, you can add these reports to the Report Server. They will be categorized under Sample Reports.
Open an added report to display it in the Report Server.

Step 8: Install third-party data sources in the Report Server

To access third-party data sources like MySQL, Oracle, or PostgreSQL in your report, you need to install them in the Report Server

a. Change the current working directory to /var/www/bold-services/clientlibrary/boldreports
b. Run the following command to install the required third-party data sources in the Report Server:

cd /var/www/bold-services/clientlibrary/boldreports

c. Restart all the Bold services by running the following command:

sudo systemctl restart bold-*.service

Reload the browser.You will see that the Oracle, MySQL, and PostgreSQL data connectors have been added.

Step 9: Export data visualization report items

To export data visualization report items such as charts and gauges when scheduling reports, you need to install the PhantomJS client library in your Report Server.

PhantomJS is a headless webkit scriptable with JavaScript.

Steps to install PhantomJS

a. Install the required packages by running this command:

sudo apt-get install build-essential chrpath libssl-dev libxft-dev libfreetype6-dev libfreetype6 libfontconfig1-dev libfontconfig1 -y

b. Download the latest stable version of PhantomJS by running this command:

sudo wget https://bitbucket.org/ariya/phantomjs/downloads/phantomjs-2.1.1-linux-x86_64.tar.bz2

c. Extract the downloaded archive file to the desired system location by running this command:

sudo tar xvjf phantomjs-2.1.1-linux-x86_64.tar.bz2 -C /usr/local/share/

d. Create a symlink to the PhantomJS binary file in the system’s bin directory by running this command:

sudo ln -s /usr/local/share/phantomjs-2.1.1-linux-x86_64/bin/phantomjs /usr/local/bin/

e. Verify the proper installation of PhantomJS by running this command.

phantomjs --version

If it shows the version number, then PhantomJS is installed properly.

After reloading the browser, you will be able to export a report that contains charts and the exported file will include the charts

Report Embedding

Bold Reports allows you to embed reporting functionalities directly within your applications. Our embedded reporting tools can be integrated with popular application platforms such as ASP.NET Core, Blazor, Angular, React, and more. The usage of the embedded reporting tools will change depending on the deployment platform. You can find more detailed information about these differences our documentation.

Conclusion

Congratulations! You have successfully deployed your reporting application using Ubuntu with and sudo privileges. By installing Nginx, configuring Bold Reports, and following the steps explained in this blog, your application is now up and running. This deployment process ensures a seamless and efficient experience for your application’s users. Happy reporting!

Bold Reports offers a 15-day free trial with no credit card required. We invite you to start a free trial and experience Bold Reports firsthand. We value your feedback, so please let us know what you think!

Stay updated with the latest announcements about upcoming releases by following our Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn pages. We’ll keep you informed about all the exciting developments in Bold Reports. Thank you for reading, and we look forward to serving you with more informative content in the future.

Report Server Deployment With Docker: A Step-by-Step Guide

BarbraWeke — Mon, 10 Jul 2023 08:08:26 +0000

In the ever-evolving landscape of software development, Docker has emerged as a leading platform for containerization, revolutionizing application deployments. As organizations adopt containerization technologies, the importance of efficient report server deployments becomes increasingly crucial.

The Bold Reports’ Report Server offers an easy and cost-effective solution to incorporating reporting capabilities into containerized environments, eliminating the need for extensive development efforts. With the Report Server, creating, managing, and sharing reports becomes effortless, requiring no coding expertise. In this blog, we will explore the process of deploying a report server with Docker, empowering you to leverage containerization’s full potential for streamlined reporting.

Prerequisites
When deploying the Bold Reports Report Server on Docker, make sure you have the following hardware and software prerequisites to ensure smooth operation and optimal performance.

Hardware requirements

A CPU with at least 4 cores.
A minimum of 16 GB of RAM.
A minimum of 8 GB of available disk space or more.

Software requirements

Docker
A database such as Microsoft SQL Server 2012 or higher, PostgreSQL, or MySQL. Ensure that the database is accessible from outside the machine.
Web browser.
Operating system Supported operating systems can be obtained here.

Deployment
In this section, we will walk through a step-by-step demonstration of deploying the Bold Reports Report Server with Docker on an Ubuntu operating system. The deployment process will be executed through the GitBash terminal. Let’s proceed with the deployment and explore the powerful functionality of the Bold Reports Report Server.

Step 1: Prepare the environment
a. Create a folder with the name “boldreports” and move it into the created folder using Linux commands

b. Download the docker_compose.yml file from GitHub using the provided command. This command will save the file to its current location.

c. Download the default.conf file. You can achieve this by running the following command.

sudo wget https://raw.githubusercontent.com/boldreports/bold-reports-docker/master/deploy/multiple-container/default.conf
I have included the GitHub link in the description below.

To update the deployment information in the docker_compose.yaml file, open it using the Vim editor. Locate the “APP_BASE_URL” value under the environment section and modify it with the desired IP address and port number. Feel free to choose any available open port for this purpose.

For this blog, we are using the Public IP address along with the port number.
http://<ipaddress/domain_name>:<port_number>

If you intend to utilize third-party data sources such as MySQL, Oracle, or PostgreSQL for your reports, they need to be installed while deploying the Report Server. To accomplish this, uncomment the INSTALL_OPTIONAL_LIBS line.

To configure the reverse proxy, ensure that you replace the with the default.config file path. If the configuration file is available in the current folder, then mention it in the following.
./default.conf

Additionally, it is important to use the same port number as the one specified in the APP_BASE_URL.

In order to ensure a secure connection when hosting the Report Server within a domain, it is important to configure SSL information. By default, the application will be hosted in non-SSL mode. To configure SSL in the docker-compose.yml file, specifically in the reverse proxy section, certain steps need to be taken:

a. Uncomment “” and “” in the volumes section and provide the file paths for the SSL certificate and key.
b. Comment out the line “8085:80” and uncomment “443:443” in the port section.

Step 2: Build and run Docker
Create the Docker image using the docker-compose command with YAML configuration files and run the following command.
docker-compose up -d

This command runs in detached mode, meaning it fetches the required Docker images and starts both the Bold Reports and database containers. Once the containers are started, the application will begin its startup process. To check the status of each container, use the following command.
docker-compose ps
Upon running this command, you will see that all the images are running.

To access the Report Server application, simply enter the APP_BASE_URL value in your web browser. It will open the application startup page.

Configure the Report Server

To get started, let’s activate your Bold Reports account. You can do this by using your online credentials or uploading the online unlock key. You can download the unlock key from your Bold Reports Account page and upload it.

For this demo, activate the account using online credentials:

Click Log in to Activate and enter your Bold Reports credentials.
If you have multiple portal licenses, you’ll be prompted to select one.
Configure the user information.
Click Next.

Configure the database for storing Report Server data

You have the option to choose between SQL Server, PostgreSQL, or MySQL databases. For this setup, choose PostgreSQL. The fields will be updated accordingly.

You can either create a new database or use an existing one on the selected server type. In this case, select New Database and enter the name “boldservicesdocker.” Click Next.

The report tenant deployment has started and will run in the background.

Click Go to Reports and you’ll be redirected to the View All page.

Here, you can explore the available sample reports by clicking Explore in the Report Sample pop-up. By clicking Add Report, you can add these sample reports to the Report Server under the Sample Reports category. If you click on a report, it will open in the Report Server.

Add client libraries
The Bold Reports Report Server doesn’t allow exporting visualization items like charts and gauges. However, if you want to enable exporting data visualization report items when scheduling reports, you can install the PhantomJS client library in your Report Server. PhantomJS is a scriptable, headless webkit that works with JavaScript.
Let’s see how to install it.

First, initiate the process of bashing the pods. To accomplish this, run the following command in order to retrieve the list of containers currently available. docket ps
Open the CLI of id_web_container by running this command docker exec -it /bin/bash Here, 94bfe0ffi8di is the container ID for id_we_container

Navigate to the optional library folder. cd /application/app_data/optional-libs
Next, install sudo and wget.
apt-get install sudo apt-get install wget
Install some required packages before installing PhantomJS by running the following command
sudo apt-get install build-essential chrpath libssl-dev libxft-dev libfreetype6-dev libfreetype6 libfontconfig1-dev libfontconfig1 -y

6.Download the latest stable version of PhantomJS from the official website with the next command.
sudo wget https://bitbucket.org/ariya/phantomjs/downloads/phantomjs-2.1.1-linux-x86_64.tar.bz2

Once the download is complete, extract the downloaded archive file to the desired system location. sudo tar xvjf phantomjs-2.1.1-linux-x86_64.tar.bz2 -C /usr/local/share/ The file will be extracted and moved to the /use/local/share directory.
Create a symlink of the PhantomJS binary file in the system’s bin directory. sudo ln -s /usr/local/share/phantomjs-2.1.1-linux-x86_64/bin/phantomjs /usr/local/bin/
Verify whether PhantomJS is installed properly by running the next command. phantomjs --version

If it displays the version number, then PhantomJS is installed correctly.
Now, you can reload the browser and export a report that contains charts. When you open the exported file, you will see that the charts are exported as well.

Conclusion
In this blog post, we had a basic introduction to the Report Server, the deployment process on Docker, and the addition of optional client libraries. We also installed PhantomJS in the deployed application to enable the export of data visualization report items when scheduling. If you found this blog post helpful, please consider sharing it with others who might benefit from it. We appreciate your support.

If you have any questions or need further assistance, please feel free to post in the comments section below. Alternatively, you can reach out to us through our contact page. If you already have an account, you can log in to ask your support question directly.
Bold Reports offers a 15-day free trial with no credit card required. We invite you to start a free trial and experience Bold Reports first-hand. We value your feedback, so please let us know what you think!

Stay updated with the latest announcements about upcoming releases by following our official Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn pages. We’ll keep you informed about all the exciting developments in Bold Reports.
Thank you for reading, and we look forward to serving you with more informative content in the future.

The 5 Hidden Benefits of Cloud-Based Reporting Tools for Your Business

BarbraWeke — Mon, 05 Jun 2023 13:45:54 +0000

In today’s fast-paced digital world, businesses are in a constant race to stay ahead of the competition. One key factor that can make or break a company’s success is its ability to effectively manage and utilize data. That’s where cloud-based reporting tools come in. These tools offer a range of benefits that can help businesses gain a competitive edge, streamline operations, get real-time updates, and make informed decisions. In this blog, we’ll explore the hidden benefits of cloud-based reporting tools for your business.

Let’s dive right in!

Real-Time Access and Collaboration
One profound yet overlooked benefit of cloud-based reporting tools is their ability to foster collaboration. With these tools, team members can share, view, and interact with the same data simultaneously as they discuss it, irrespective of their physical location. This ease of collaboration boosts productivity, speeds up decision-making processes, and fosters a culture of transparency within the organization. Cloud-based reporting tools provide real-time access to data from any device with an internet connection. This means that you and your team can access the latest information and collaborate on reports no matter where any of you are.

Scalability
Scalability is a significant advantage of cloud-based reporting tools. Unlike traditional on-premises solutions, which might require substantial hardware investment to handle growth, cloud-based tools can adapt to your business’s changing needs with ease. If your data volume increases, the cloud infrastructure can adjust almost instantaneously to accommodate the surge, ensuring seamless operation. Likewise, in quieter periods, you can scale down to avoid paying for unneeded resources. This level of flexibility eliminates the financial risk of upfront overprovisioning and the operational risk of underprovisioning. In essence, the scalability of cloud-based reporting tools enables your business to grow and evolve without being hindered by rigid data-handling constraints.

Enhanced Security
Security is another hidden benefit that can’t be ignored. While initial cloud adoption was hindered by security concerns, today’s cloud-based reporting tools are built with robust security protocols that can even surpass the security measures of on-premises solutions. They adhere to strict security standards like SOC 2 Type 2, an auditing procedure that ensures service providers maintain sufficient security in data management to protect your organization and the privacy of its clients. Moreover, these tools are designed to comply with regulations like GDPR, which dictates the protection and privacy of data for individuals within the European Union. With automatic updates, regular patches, and stringent data encryption, these tools ensure that your data is secure from potential breaches, while maintaining compliance with key security regulations and certifications.

Power of Integration
The power of integration offered by cloud-based reporting tools is truly transformative. These tools can interface with a plethora of data sources, from traditional on-premises databases to modern cloud-based systems and social media platforms. This integration capability means that businesses can consolidate and analyze data from various systems in a unified platform, breaking down barriers between data sources that often prevent a full and complete understanding. By enabling a full view of operations, these tools facilitate more informed decision-making based on complete data. Additionally, integration often comes with automated data synchronization, ensuring real-time reporting and analysis. Thus, the power of integration in cloud-based reporting tools helps businesses to make the most of their data, improving the accuracy and timeliness of insights.

Reduced IT Burden
One of the distinct advantages of cloud-based reporting tools is the significant reduction in IT burden. Traditional on-premises reporting systems require a substantial commitment from IT teams, from installing and configuring hardware to maintaining, updating, and troubleshooting the system. This can divert valuable resources from strategic tasks that drive business growth. Cloud-based reporting tools, on the other hand, are managed by the service provider. They take care of the technical complexities, including system maintenance, upgrades, and security, which are all done in the background without disrupting business operations. This allows your IT team to focus on mission-critical projects instead of routine maintenance. As a result, you not only save on IT resources but also reduce the overall cost of system management.

Bold Reports Cloud-Based Reporting Tools
In this context, consider a product like Bold Reports. This robust, cloud-based reporting toolset is designed to provide businesses with real-time insights, secure data handling (SOC 2 Type 2), and an intuitive interface for seamless navigation. Whether you are a small business or a large enterprise, Bold Reports offers scalability to suit your unique needs. Not only does it offer the benefits mentioned in this article, but advanced customization options and unparalleled customer support, making it a compelling choice for businesses aiming to leverage the power of their data.

Conclusion
In conclusion, cloud-based reporting tools, with their numerous acclaimed and hidden benefits, are becoming an indispensable part of modern businesses. They offer more than just data management; they provide a means to transform data into actionable insights, leading to improved business outcomes. So, if you’re planning to future-proof your business, it’s time to consider moving your reporting to the cloud.

Visit our website to learn more about Bold Reports’ cloud-based collaboration and reporting solutions.

If you have any questions, please post them in the comments section. You can also contact us through our contact page, or if you already have an account, you can log in to ask your support question. Bold Reports offers a 15-day free trial without any credit card information required. We welcome you to start a free trial and experience Bold Reports. Let us know what you think!

Stay tuned to our official Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn pages for announcements about upcoming releases.

How to Add Report Viewer to an Angular Application

BarbraWeke — Mon, 15 May 2023 12:53:04 +0000

With our Bold Reports platform, you can easily embed reporting components in projects to create, bind data to, view, and export pixel-perfect, paginated reports.

In this blog, I will walk you through the integration of our Angular Report Viewer component into an Angular CLI application. The Angular CLI application will render reports in a browser, and the processing of the report is handled using a Web API application.

If you are using an earlier version of Bold Reports for Angular (v3.3.32), then refer to the Getting Started tutorial for earlier versions.

Prerequisites

Node JS (version 8.x or later)
NPM (v3.x.x or higher)
A browser (Chrome, Edge, Firefox, etc.)

Install the Angular CLI
The Angular CLI is a command-line scaffolding tool used to initialize, develop, and maintain Angular applications directly from a command shell.
Run the following command to install the Angular CLI globally.



npm install -g @angular/cli@latest

Create a New Application
To create a new Angular application, run the following command in the command prompt.



ng new project-name
E.g.: ng new angular-reportviewer

In the command prompt, add the Angular routing to your application by entering “y” in the prompt window. Then select the Enter key.
Now, choose the CSS stylesheet format using the arrow keys and then select Enter. The Angular CLI installs the required Angular npm packages and other dependencies.

Choosing CSS stylesheet format

Let’s dive into the integration of the Bold Reports Angular Report Viewer component.

Configure Bold Report Viewer in Angular CLI

To configure the Report Viewer component, change the directory to your application’s root folder.



cd project-name
E.g.: cd angular-reportviewer

Then, install Bold Reports typings by executing the following command. The Bold Reports typings package contains the TypeScript definitions for Bold Reports Embedded Reporting components.



npm install --save-dev @boldreports/types

To install the Bold Reports Angular library, run the following command.



npm install @boldreports/angular-reporting-components --save-dev

Open the application in an editor. In this blog, I am using Visual Studio Code for editing purposes. You can use any editor.
Now, let’s register the @bold-reports/types under the typeRoots array and add the typings, jquery, and all to the tsconfig.app.json file.



{
...
...
"compilerOptions": {
...
...
"typeRoots": [
"node_modules/@types",
"node_modules/@boldreports/types"
],
"types": [
"jquery",
"reports.all"
]
},
...
...
}

The Report Viewer requires a window.jQuery object to render. Import jQuery in the src > polyfills.ts file as in the following code snippet.



import * as jquery from 'jquery';
let windowInstance = (window as { [key: string]: any });
windowInstance['jQuery'] = jquery;
windowInstance['$'] = jquery;

Add the Theme Reference
A theme gives life to any Angular component. Open the angular.json file from your application’s root directory and reference the Report Viewer component styles file, bold.reports.all.min.css, under the styles node of the projects section as in the following code snippet.



"styles": [  
  "styles.css",      
  "./node_modules/@boldreports/javascript-reporting-controls/Content/material/bold.reports.all.min.css"
],

Add the Theme Reference

Note: In the previous code, the Material theme is used. You can modify the theme based on your application. Reference the following syntax:
./node_modules/@boldreports/javascript-reporting-controls/Content/[theme-name]/bold.reports.all.min.css
In Bold Reports, the report processing and rendering in the browser will be handled using the server-side Web API and client-side HTML page, respectively.

Adding Report Viewer Component in the Client-Side
To add the Report Viewer component on the client-side:

Open the module.ts file and import the viewer module.



import { BrowserModule } from '@angular/platform-browser';
import { NgModule } from '@angular/core';
import { BoldReportViewerModule } from '@boldreports/angular-reporting-components';
import { AppRoutingModule } from './app-routing.module';
import { AppComponent } from './app.component';
// Report viewer
import '@boldreports/javascript-reporting-controls/Scripts/bold.report-viewer.min';
// data-visualization
import '@boldreports/javascript-reporting-controls/Scripts/data-visualization/ej.bulletgraph.min';
import '@boldreports/javascript-reporting-controls/Scripts/data-visualization/ej.chart.min';
@NgModule({
declarations: [
AppComponent
],
imports: [
BrowserModule,
BoldReportViewerModule,
AppRoutingModule
],
providers: [],
bootstrap: [AppComponent]
})
export class AppModule { }
![This blog post explains how to add the Report Viewer component to an Angular application in Bold Reports](https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/articles/wlj2xj8d8bpa1nwjsap1.png)Import Viewer Module

Open the html file and reference the following scripts in the tag.



<!-- Data-Visualization -->
<script src="./../node_modules/@boldreports/javascript-reporting-controls/Scripts/common/ej2-base.min.js"></script>
<script src="./../node_modules/@boldreports/javascript-reporting-controls/Scripts/common/ej2-data.min.js"></script>
<script src="./../node_modules/@boldreports/javascript-reporting-controls/Scripts/common/ej2-pdf-export.min.js"></script>
<script src="./../node_modules/@boldreports/javascript-reporting-controls/Scripts/common/ej2-svg-base.min.js"></script>
<script src="./../node_modules/@boldreports/javascript-reporting-controls/Scripts/data-visualization/ej2-lineargauge.min.js"></script>
<script src="./../node_modules/@boldreports/javascript-reporting-controls/Scripts/data-visualization/ej2-circulargauge.min.js"></script>
<script src="./../node_modules/@boldreports/javascript-reporting-controls/Scripts/data-visualization/ej2-maps.min.js"></script>

Reference the Scripts and CSS

Let’s look at the scripts and style sheets required to render the Report Viewer.

ej2-base.min.js- Render the gauge item. Add these scripts only if your report contains the gauge report item.
ej2-data.min.js- Render the gauge item. Add these scripts only if your report contains the gauge report item.
ej2-pdf-export.min.js- Render the gauge item. Add these scripts only if your report contains the gauge report item.
ej2-svg-base.min.js- Render the gauge item. Add these scripts only if your report contains the gauge report item.
ej2-lineargauge.min.js- Renders the linear gauge item. Add this script only if your report contains the linear gauge report item.
ej2-circulargauge.min.js- Renders the circular gauge item. Add this script only if your report contains the circular gauge report item.
ej2-maps.min.js- Renders the map item. Add this script only if your report contains the map report item.
ej.chart.min.js-Renders the chart item. Add this script only if your report contains the chart report item.
bold.report-viewer.min.js-Mandatory to render the Bold Report Viewer.

Open app.component.html and initialize the Report Viewer using the following code snippet.



<bold-reportviewer id="reportViewer_Control" style="width: 100%;height: 980px">
</bold-reportviewer>

Initialize the Report Viewer

Open app.component.ts and initialize the service URL and report path. Then, include the constructor to initialize the report viewer properties.



import { Component } from '@angular/core'; 
@Component({  
selector: 'app-root',
templateUrl: './app.component.html',  
styleUrls: ['./app.component.css']
})
export class AppComponent { 
 title = 'reportviewerapp'; 
 public serviceUrl: string; 
 public reportPath: string;  
   constructor() { 
       // Initialize the Report Viewer properties here. 
   }
}

Include constructor to initialize the Report Viewer Properties

Set Report Path and Web API Service
Next, let’s set the report path and Web API service. This is where the RDL report is processed and rendered in the browser using the Web API service.
In this blog, I am using the render path unit, which requires the service URL and report path. The Web API service is hosted as an Azure web app.
The report path property sets the path of the report file, and the report service URL property specifies the report Web API service URL.
To render the report, set the reportPath and reportServiceUrl properties of the Report Viewer in the constructor as follows.



constructor() {    
 this.serviceUrl = 'https://demos.boldreports.com/services/api/ReportViewer';    
 this.reportPath = '~/Resources/docs/sales-order-detail.rdl'; 
}

Set reportPath and reportServiceUrl properties in Constructor

I am using the sales-order-detail.rdl report from the demo server location. This file is located in the resources/docs/ path.
Open the app.component.html file to set the reportPath and reportServiceUrl properties of the Report Viewer as in the following.



<bold-reportviewer id="reportViewer_Control" [reportServiceUrl] = "serviceUrl" [reportPath] = "reportPath" style="width: 100%;height: 980px">
</bold-reportviewer>

Set properties in Report Viewer
Then save the application.

Serve the Application

To serve the application:
Go to the workspace folder (report-viewer). Launch the server by using the following CLI command with the –open option.



ng serve --open

The ng serve command serves the application and the –open option automatically opens your browser to http://localhost:4200/.

Angular Report Viewer Page

Visit:https://www.boldreports.com/contact/How to Add Report Viewer to an Angular Application?

Conclusion
In this blog, we learned how to integrate the Report Viewer component into an Angular application. To explore further, go through our sample reports and Bold Reports documentation.
If you have any questions, please post them in the comments section. You can also contact us through our contact page, or if you already have an account, you can log in to submit your support question.
Bold Reports now comes with a 15-day free trial with no credit card information required. We welcome you to start a free trial and experience Bold Reports for yourself. Give it a try and let us know what you think!
Stay tuned to our official Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Pinterest, and Instagram pages for announcements about upcoming releases.

How to Load a Report from the Report Server to an Angular 12 Application

BarbraWeke — Fri, 05 May 2023 07:12:00 +0000

I will walk you through creating an Angular 12 application and the steps to load an already published SSRS RDL report from the Bold Reports Report Server.

The Report Server is a report management studio provided by Syncfusion that allows users to create, manage, and share reports securely and easily. Bold Reports Report Server provides a built-in REST API service that helps you display and manage the server’s reports.

Prerequisites

. Node.js (version 8 or higher)
. NPM (version 3 or higher)

Generate personal access token

Server Login

Click on the user avatar icon in the left navigation bar. Click the user profile. You will be redirected to the My Profile page. Click Personal Access Token in the top panel.

Personal access token

Click the click to copy icon for the generated access token.

Click to copy

Create the Angular 12 application

Install the Angular CLI. If you are using an earlier version of Bold Reports for Angular(v3.3.32 or earlier), then refer to the Getting Started for Earlier Versions tutorial globally in the system by running the following npm install command in the command prompt.

npm install -g @angular/cli@latest

Note: The Angular CLI is a command-line interface tool that allows you to initialize, develop, scaffold, and maintain Angular applications directly from a command shell.

Create a new Angular application by running the following new command in the command prompt.

ng new project-name E.g.: ng new reportviewerapp

The new command prompts you for information about features to include in the initial app project. Accept the defaults by pressing Enter pressing Enter.

*Configure Report Viewer *

Run the change directory command in the command prompt to change the directory to the Angular 12 application root folder.

cd project-name E.g.: cd reportviewerapp

Install the Bold Reports Angular library in the Angular application by using the npm install The library should be installed as a dev dependency by running the following command.

npm install @boldreports/angular-reporting-components --save-dev

Install @boldreports/types in the Angular 12 application by executing the following command.

npm install --save-dev @boldreports/types

Open the Angular application root folder in Visual Studio Code for editing purposes.

Open the app.json file, add @boldreports/types and @types under the typeRoots array, and add jQuery and reportsunder the types array. @boldreports/types provide the TypeScript definition for Bold Reports.

{  
...  ...  
"compilerOptions": 
{    
...    ...    
"typeRoots": 
[
"node_modules/@types",      
"node_modules/@boldreports/types"    
], 
"types": ["jquery", "reports.all"]
},  
...  ...
}

Open the polyfills.js file from the src folder and import jQuery. Here, window refers to the global object on the client side. The Report Viewer control requires window.jQuery to render the component.

import * as jquery from 'jquery';
let window instance = (window as { [key: string]: any });
windowInstance['jQuery'] = jquery;
windowInstance['$'] = jquery;

Add the CSS reference

Open the json file.
Register bold.all.min.css under the style array. bold.reports.all.min.css includes the CSS properties for the reporting components. Angular 12 will throw common or AMD dependencies that can cause an optimization bailouts warning due to adding the scripts in the app.module.ts file because they use the AMD module loader.
Add the Report Viewer, bullet graph, and chart scripts within the allowedCommonJS dependency section to remove the warning add the Report viewer , Bullet Graph and chart scripts within the allowedCommonJSDependency should be added under the options section, and the o*ptions* section will be available under the Angular application name section.

Add the Report Viewer component

Open the module.ts file from the app folder.

Replace the following code sample in the module.ts file.

import { BrowserModule } from '@angular/platform browser;
import { NgModule } from '@angular/core';
import { BoldReportViewerModule } from '@boldreports/angular-reporting-components';
import { AppComponent } from './app.component';
// Report viewer
import '@boldreports/javascript-reporting-controls/Scripts/bold.report-viewer.min';
// data-visualization
import '@boldreports/javascript-reporting-controls/Scripts/data-visualization/ej.bulletgraph.min';
import '@boldreports/javascript-reporting-controls/Scripts/data-visualization/ej.chart.min';
@NgModule({
  declarations: [
    AppComponent
  ],
imports: [
    BrowserModule,
    BoldReportViewerModule
  ],
  providers: [],
  bootstrap: [AppComponent]
})
export class AppModule { }

The following table shows the necessary imported scripts and their purposes in the Report Viewer control.

@boldreports/angular-reporting-component- Provides the UI component for the Angular Report Viewer control.
ej.bulletgraph.min- Renders the bullet graph and chart report items in the Report Viewer control.
ej.chart.min
Bold.reports-viewer.min -Imported for rendering the Report Viewer control.

Reference the scripts

Open the html file from the src folder.
Refer to the following scripts in the head tag and format the document.

<!-- Data-Visualization -->
<script src="https://cdn.boldreports.com/4.2.56/scripts/common/ej2-base.min.js"></script>
<script src="https://cdn.boldreports.com/4.2.56/scripts/common/ej2-data.min.js"></script>
<script src="https://cdn.boldreports.com/4.2.56/scripts/common/ej2-pdf-export.min.js"></script>
<script src="https://cdn.boldreports.com/4.2.56/scripts/common/ej2-svg-base.min.js"></script>
<script src="https://cdn.boldreports.com/4.2.56/scripts/data-visualization/ej2-lineargauge.min.js"></script>
<script src="https://cdn.boldreports.com/4.2.56/scripts/data-visualization/ej2-circulargauge.min.js"></script>
<script src="https://cdn.boldreports.com/4.2.56/scripts/data-visualization/ej2-maps.min.js"></script>

Configure the Report Viewer template

Open the component.html file and initialize the Report Viewer.
Replace the following code sample in the component.html file.

<bold-reportviewer id="reportViewer_Control" style="width: 100%;height: 950px"></bold-reportviewer>

Note: bold-reportviewer is an element that represents a new Bold Report viewer control. id is a string that specifies the unique name for the Report Viewer control. reportserviceUrl includes the service URL of the Report Server. Service authorization token includes the authorization token value, which is retrieved from the server. **reportPath **is used to set the path of the report, style includes the width and height for the Report Viewer control, and reportserviceUrl saves the file.

Configure the Report Viewer control

Open the app.component.ts file.
Replace the following code sample.

import { Component } from '@angular/core';

@Component({
selector: 'app-root',
templateUrl: './app.component.html',
styleUrls: ['./app.component.css']
})
export class AppComponent {
title = 'reportviewerapp';
public serviceUrl: string;
public reportPath: string;

constructor() {
// Initialize the Report Viewer properties here.
}
}

In the code we are replacing, the report service URL specifies the web API service URL. It contains the server name, service name, and API name. The format of the report service URL is “http://reportservername/reporting/reportservice/api/Viewer.” You can use your report server. reporting/reportservice represents the service name of the Report Server and api/Viewer represents the web API name of the Report Server.

Enter the report server URL inside the constructor. The report service URL specifies the server name and site information. The format of the report server URL is “http://reportservername/reporting/api/site/sitename.” You can use your Report Server name. Site/sitename represents the site from which you will load the report in the Report Viewer control. You can enter your site name.
Enter the service authorization token inside the constructor. This specifies the personal authorization token copied from the Report Server.
Assign the value for the report path inside the constructor to specify the path in which the RDL report file is published in the Report Server.import { Component } from '@angular/core';

@Component({
selector: 'app-root',
templateUrl: './app.component.html',
styleUrls: ['./app.component.css']
})
export class AppComponent {
title = 'jsreport-sample';
public serviceUrl: string;
public reportPath: string;

constructor() {
this.serviceUrl = 'https://demos.boldreports.com/services/api/ReportViewer';
this.reportPath = '~/Resources/docs/sales-order-detail.rdl';
}
}

Save the file.
Run the ng serve command in the command prompt to preview the report. The browser opens to the URL “http://localhost:4200,” and the report is loaded in the Report Viewer control.

Load report from Cloud Report Server

The steps that need to be followed to load a report from the Cloud Report Server are the same as those in the previous section, but the report service URL and the Report Server URL differ based on your cloud server configuration.
Since the service for cloud reporting is hosted separately, reporting/reportservice is not set in the report service URL. Also, since multitenancy is not supported in the cloud reporting server, site information is not required in the report server URL.
You need to generate the service authorization token from the Cloud Report Server, add it to the application, and add the path of the report you want to render in the Report Viewer.

Visit:https://www.boldreports.com/contact/https://www.boldreports.com/contact/

Conclusion
Now that I have shown you how to load a report from the report server in an Angular 12 application using Bold Reports, I hope you are comfortable with doing it yourself.

Check out Bold Reports demos and documentation to learn more. If you have any questions, please post them in the comments section below. You can also contact us through our contact page, or if you already have an account, you can log in to ask your support question.

Bold Reports offers a 15-day free trial that does not require a credit card. We invite you to sign up and experience Bold Reports for yourself. Give it a try and let us know what you think!
Now that I have shown you how to load a report from the report server in an Angular 12 application using Bold Reports, I hope you are comfortable with doing it yourself.

Most Commonly Used Reporting Databases

BarbraWeke — Fri, 05 May 2023 06:26:00 +0000

Reporting databases are specifically designed and optimized for generating reports. They are usually separate databases from the transactional databases used to store data for operational purposes, such as processing orders or recording customer interactions.

Reporting databases are typically optimized for fast querying and aggregating large amounts of data, as well as for storing historical data for longer periods of time. They may also include features such as data visualization and dashboarding tools to make it easier to generate and view reports.

Data today lives in a variety of data stores such as MS SQL Server, Oracle, PostgreSQL, MySQL, IBM Db2, Apache Cassandra, MongoDB, Microsoft Excel files, and CSV files. Bringing this data together in a form that will allow you to produce useful reports is not a small task. You will have to deal with integration, clean up, reconciliation, and the secure storage of the resulting data. The process you come up with will have to run on a schedule to keep data up to date. In fact, this is where most of the messy work lurks.

In this blog, we’ll go through some of the best reporting databases.

Best database to use

The best database for your reporting needs will depend on your specific requirements and preferences. Unfortunately, it is always challenging to determine which one will best suit your organization. Here is a deep dive into the best and most popular databases:

. Microsoft SQL Server: Microsoft SQL Server is a popular database management system that is often used for reporting purposes. It is known for its reliability, performance, and security, and it offers a range of tools and features for data management and analysis. One of the key features of SQL Server is its support for structured query language (SQL), which is a standard programming language for managing and manipulating data in a database. SQL Server also offers a range of tools and features for data management, including support for data modelling, indexing, and security. It is a popular choice for reporting due to its robust data management capabilities and support for a wide range of reporting and analysis tools. SQL Server is available in several editions, including Express, Standard, and Enterprise, which offer different levels of features and capabilities. It can be used on a variety of platforms, including Windows, Linux, and Docker, and it can be deployed on-premises or in the cloud.

. Oracle: Oracle is a commercial database management system that is widely used for reporting purposes in enterprise environments. It is known for its scalability, security, and performance, and it offers a range of advanced features for data management and analysis. It supports SQL and offers a range of tools and features for data management, including support for data modelling, indexing, and security. It can be deployed on-premises or in the cloud, and it is available on a variety of platforms, including Windows, Linux, and Solaris.

. MySQL: MySQL offers both the open-source Community Server and the proprietary Enterprise Server. The latter has a series of proprietary extensions that are server plugins. Oracle MySQL offers a high-availability solution. MySQL can run on cloud-computing platforms like Microsoft Azure and Oracle Cloud Infrastructure. It is a popular choice for reporting due to its reliability, flexibility, and support for a wide range of reporting and analysis tools. It is known for handling large amounts of data efficiently.

. PostgreSQL: PostgreSQL is an enterprise class, open-source database management system that is often used for reporting purposes. It is frequently used in large, mission-critical systems where high availability and scalability are important. It supports both SQL and JSON In addition, PostgreSQL has advanced data types and performance optimization capabilities, which are only accessible in expensive production databases. Some of its features are granular access controls, point-in-time recovery, nested transactions, and international character sets.

. MariaDB: MariaDB is a fork of the MySQL database management system that is also widely used for reporting purposes. Like MySQL, MariaDB supports SQL and offers a range of tools and features for data management. It includes new storage engines like Aria, ColumnStore, and MyRocks.

Reporting Tools Data Connectivity

Many reporting tools are available that support various data connectivity options, depending on the data sources with which they are designed to work. Some common data sources supported by many reporting tools include:

. Relational databases: SQL Server, Oracle, MySQL, and PostgreSQL.

. Big data: Hadoop and Apache Spark.

. Cloud data sources: Amazon Redshift, Google BigQuery, and Azure SQL Data Warehouse.

. Data files: CSV, Excel, and JSON.

. Web APIs

In addition to these data connectivity options, some reporting tools like Bold Reports also provide support for custom data connectors, which allows you to connect to any data source that is not natively supported. This can be useful if you need to access data from a proprietary data source. It is important to choose a reporting tool that supports the data sources you need to work with in order to effectively access and visualize your data.

Bold Reports supports connectivity to all five database types. Bold Reports is a set of SSRS RDL/RDLC reporting and data visualization tools that allows you to create interactive reports from various data sources. You can also connect and access data from any REST API sources like OData or RSS feeds created by yourself or publicly available. This makes it easy to access and visualize data from virtually any source.

Visit: https://www.boldreports.com/contact/Most Commonly Used Reporting Databases?

Conclusion
I hope this blog provided a clear idea of the most commonly used reporting databases. To explore more about Bold Reports and its data source support, look through our documentation site and demo samples.

If you have any questions, please post them in the comments section. You can also contact us through our contact page, or if you already have an account, you can log in to ask your support question.

Bold Reports offers a 15-day free trial without any required credit card information. We welcome you to start a free trial and experience Bold Reports. Try it and let us know what you think!

Stay tuned to our official Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Pinterest, and Instagram pages for announcements about upcoming releases.

What Are MIS Reports? Benefits, Types, Key Components, and Steps for Preparing Them

BarbraWeke — Fri, 05 May 2023 06:12:00 +0000

This blog will walk you through MIS reports, what are they, their benefits, types, key components, and steps for preparing them using the Bold Reports reporting tool.

What are MIS reports?

A management information system (MIS) report is a document that provides information to support decision-making and management activities within an organization. MIS reports are usually produced by a computer-based system that collects and analyzes data from various sources within the organization. The purpose of an MIS report is to provide managers with the information they need to make informed decisions and to manage the organization more effectively.

What is included in MIS reports?

MIS reports can include a wide range of information depending on the goals and needs of the organization. Common types of information that may be included in an MIS report include financial data, sales data, marketing data, operations data, and human resources data. The specific information included in the report will depend on the organization’s goals and objectives, as well as the data being collected and analyzed.

MIS reports can be generated on a regular basis, such as daily, weekly, or monthly, or they can be generated on an ad hoc basis in response to specific needs or requests. MIS reports can be customized to meet the needs of various levels of management within the organization, such as top-level executives and department managers.

Benefits of MIS

. Improved decision-making: MIS provides managers with real-time, accurate, and relevant data that they can use to make more informed decisions.

. Increased efficiency: MIS can automate many tasks and processes, freeing up time for managers to focus on more important tasks.

. Enhanced communication: MIS can facilitate communication within the organization by providing a centralized location for storing and sharing information.

. Improved collaboration: MIS can facilitate collaboration by providing a platform for team members to collaborate on projects and share information.

. Increased competitiveness: MIS can help organizations stay competitive by providing them with the information and tools they need to analyze and respond to market trends and customer needs.

. Enhanced security: MIS can help protect an organization’s data and systems from unauthorized access and cyber threats.

MIS report types

Several types of reports can be produced from an MIS, including:

. Executive reports: These reports are intended for top-level management and offer a high-level overview of the organization’s performance.

. Operations reports: These reports focus on the day-to-day operations of the organization and provide detailed information about specific processes and activities.

. Financial reports: These reports provide information about the organization’s financial performance, including income statements, balance sheets, and cash flow statements.

. Sales reports: These reports provide information about the organization’s sales activity, including sales volume, revenue, and customer demographics.

. Marketing reports: These reports provide information about the organization’s marketing efforts, including campaign effectiveness, customer segmentation, and market trends.

. Human resources report: These reports provide information about the organization’s human resources activities, including employee attendance, turnover, and training.

. Inventory reports: These reports provide information about the organization’s inventory levels, including stock levels, reorder points, and stockturn.

The types of reports produced by an MIS depend on the organization’s needs and goals, as well as the data being collected and analyzed.

Key components of an MIS report

The components typically include data on the performance of the organization, as well as key metrics and trends that can help management understand the current state of the business and make informed decisions. It is important that the report is well-written and easy to understand, and that it provides a clear and accurate picture of the current state of the business. The following are the key components of an MIS report:

. Executive summary: This section provides a brief overview of the key points and findings of the report. It should be concise and easy to understand and highlight any major trends or issues management should be aware of.

. Data and analysis: The main body of the report should include a detailed analysis of the collected data. This could include financial data, sales data, customer data, or any other relevant information. The analysis should be thorough and include both quantitative and qualitative data.

. Recommendations: Based on this analysis, the report should present recommendations for how management can address any identified issues or opportunities. These recommendations should be specific, and actionable, and should consider the unique needs and goals of the organization.

. Conclusion: The conclusion should summarize the key findings and recommendations of the report and should provide a clear next step for management to take.

Steps for preparing an MIS report

The following are the steps for preparing an MIS report:

Determine the purpose of the report: Understand why the report is being prepared and what the intended audience is. This will help you focus on the most important information and tailor the report to the needs of the audience.
Gather data: The next step is to gather all the necessary data for the report. This may include financial data, sales data, customer data, or any other relevant information. It is important to ensure that the data is accurate and up to date.
Analyze the data: Once you have gathered all the necessary data, you will need to analyze it to identify any trends, patterns, or issues that are relevant to the purpose of the report. This may involve creating charts, graphs, or other visual aids to help illustrate the data.
Write the executive summary: The executive summary is a brief overview of the key points and findings of the report. It should be concise and easy to understand and highlight any major trends or issues management should be aware of.
Write the main body of the report: The main body of the report should include a detailed analysis of the data, including quantitative and qualitative assessments. Include any recommendations for how management can address any identified issues or opportunities.
Write the conclusion: The conclusion should summarize the key findings and recommendations of the report and should provide a clear next step for management to take.
Review and revise: Before finalizing the report, it is important to review and revise it to ensure that it is clear, concise, and easy to understand. Make sure that all the data is accurate and that the recommendations are actionable and relevant.
By following these steps, you can effectively prepare an MIS report that provides valuable information to management and decision-makers in your organization.

Creating MIS reports with reporting tools like Bold Reports

Reporting tools like Bold Reports can make producing MIS reports much easier. Here are the steps to publishing a report with the help of Bold Reports:

Gather the data: Collect the data you need to create the report. This could include data from your organization’s financial and operational systems, as well as external sources like market research or industry benchmarks. You can store your data from a variety of commonly used SQL and NoSQL data providers. You can store and access data from any of the REST API sources created by yourself or publicly available (Azure Search service, OData, RSS feed, etc.). You can store your data in warehouse systems such as Google BigQuery and Azure SQL Data Warehouse.
Design a report: Design a report outline that is appropriate for your report. Bold Reports offers a variety of themes to choose from, or you can create your own custom design.
Create the report: Use Bold Reports’ Report Designer to build the SSRS RDL/RDLC report using the data you have collected. You can use features like charts, graphs, and tables to present the data in an easy-to-understand format. Create data models with an easy-to-use query builder. Create and view organized and shaped data to make bolder business decisions using features like sorting, filtering, grouping, summaries, aggregates, and calculated fields.
Publish the report: Once the report is complete, you can publish it using Bold Reports’ Report Server. This will make it available to the stakeholders who need to see it. Report Server’s simple user interface helps manage and share data entities on demand or on a predefined schedule with stakeholders. You can share through emails and in file formats such as PDF, Excel, CSV, Word, PowerPoint, XML, and HTML.
Update the report: In the Report Server, you can provide permission to any member to edit the reports. Regularly review and update the report to ensure it continues to provide accurate and relevant information.

MIS report on Sales created using BoldReports

Visit:https://www.boldreports.com/contact/What Are MIS Reports? Benefits, Types, Key Components, and Steps for Preparing Them?
Conclusion
I hope this blog provided a clear idea of MIS reports, their benefits, their types, and the steps for preparing them. To explore more about report creation with Bold Reports, look through our demos, solutions, and documentation.

If you have any questions, please post them in the comments section below. You can also contact us through our contact page, or if you already have an account, you can log in to ask your question.

Bold Reports offers a 15-day free trial without any credit card information required. We welcome you to start a free trial and experience Bold Reports for yourself. Let us know what you think!

Stay tuned to our official Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Pinterest, and Instagram pages for announcements about upcoming releases.

Create an ASP.NET Web API Reporting Service in Bold Reports

BarbraWeke — Thu, 04 May 2023 12:31:00 +0000

This blog will walk you through how to create a web API service for the Bold Reports Report Viewer component using the ASP.NET Empty Web Application template in a JavaScript application.

The Report Viewer is a visualization control used to display SSRS RDL and RDLC reports within web applications. It allows you to view RDL and RDLC reports with or without using SSRS.

Create a ASP.NET Web API project

First, open** Visual Studio 2019*, click* Create a new project**, and choose C# from the dropdown.
Select ASP.NET Web Application (.NET Framework) and then click Next.
Change the application name to ReportViewerWebAPI and click Create.

Create a New Project

Select** Empty, Web API*, and then click **OK*.

Create a Web API

The web application project is created with the default ASP.NET web template.

Install the NuGet packages

Let’s see how to install the NuGet packages.

Right-click the project in the Solution Explorer tab and choose Manage NuGet Packages.
In the Browse tab, search for the BoldReports.Web package and install it.

Install the BoldReports.Web Package

The BoldReports.Web package is used to build the server-side implementations.

The following table provides details about the dependency packages and their usage.

. Syncfusion.Pdf.AspNet- Used to export the report to PDF.

. yncfusion.DocIO.AspNet-Used to export the report to Word.

. Syncfusion.XlsIO.AspNet- Used to export the report to Excel.

. Syncfusion.Presentation.AspNet- Used to export the report to PowerPoint.

Newtonsoft.Json- Used to serialize and deserialize data for the Report Viewer. It is a mandatory package for Report Viewer. The package version should be higher than 10.0.1 for .NET Core 2.0, and others should be higher than 9.0.1.

The dependent packages will be installed automatically on installing the BoldReports.Web package.

Add a web API controller

Right-click the Controller folder in your project and select Add > New Item from the context menu.

Add a Web API Controller

Select Web API Controller Class from the listed templates, name it ReportViewerController.cs, and then click Add.

Select Web API Controller Class

In the ReportViewerController, add the following using statement.

using BoldReports.Web.ReportViewer;

Inherit the IReportController interface and implement the following methods (place the following code in the newly created web API controller).

public class ReportViewerController : ApiController, IReportController
{    
// Post action for processing the RDL/RDLC report    
public object PostReportAction(Dictionary<string, object> jsonResult)    
{        
return ReportHelper.ProcessReport(jsonResult, this);    
}     
// Get action for getting resources from the report    
[System.Web.Http.ActionName("GetResource")]    
[AcceptVerbs("GET")]    
public object GetResource(string key, string resourcetype, bool isPrint)    
{        
return ReportHelper.GetResource(key, resourcetype, isPrint);    
}     
// Method that will be called when initializing the report options before the start of processing the report     
[NonAction]    
public void OnInitReportOptions(ReportViewerOptions reportOption)    
{        
// You can update report options here    
}     
// Method that will be called when reported is loaded    
[NonAction]    
public void OnReportLoaded(ReportViewerOptions reportOption)    
{        
// You can update report options here    
}
}

IReportController interface

We need to declare action methods that are defined in the web API controller for processing RDL, RDLC, and SSRS reports, and for handling resource requests from the Report Viewer control.

The IReportController has the following action method declarations.

GetResource- Used for getting resources for the report.

PostReportAction- Used for posting the request for the reporting process.

OnInitReportOptions- Report initialization method that is triggered when the report begins to be processed.

OnReportLoaded-Report loaded method that is triggered when report and subreport begin loading.

ReportHelper class

This contains helper methods that help process POST or GET requests from the Report Viewer control and returns the response to the Report Viewer control.

GetResource- Returns the report resource for the requested key.

ProcessReport- Processes the report request and returns the result.

Add routing information

To include an action name in the URI, expand the App_Start folder, open the WebApiConfig.cs file, and include the action parameter in the routeTemplate of the Register method.

public static class WebApiConfig
{
    public static void Register(HttpConfiguration config)
    {
        // Web API configuration and services
        // Web API routes
        config.MapHttpAttributeRoutes();
        config.Routes.MapHttpRoute(
        name: "DefaultApi",
        routeTemplate: "api/{controller}/{action}/{id}",
        defaults: new { id = RouteParameter.Optional }
        );
    }
}

The action parameter names the action method on the controller, which is used to map the method in the controller.

Enable cross-origin requests

Browser security prevents Report Viewer from making requests to your web API service when they run in different domains. To allow access to your web API service from a different domain, you must enable cross-origin requests.

Right-click the project in the Solution Explorer tab and choose Manage NuGet Packages.
Search for AspNet.WebApi.Cors NuGet packages and install them in your web API application.
Call EnableCors in WebApiConfig.cs to add cross-origin resource sharing (CORS) services to the Register method. Use the following code to allow any origin requests.

public static class WebApiConfig
{
    public static void Register(HttpConfiguration config)
    {
        // Add EnableCors
        config.EnableCors();
        // Web API configuration and services
        // Web API routes
        config.MapHttpAttributeRoutes();
        config.Routes.MapHttpRoute(
        name: "DefaultApi",
        routeTemplate: "api/{controller}/{action}/{id}",
        defaults: new { id = RouteParameter.Optional }
        );
    }
}

To specify the CORS policy for the API controller, open the ReportViewerController.cs file and add the following using statement.

using System.Web.Http.Cors;

Then, add the [EnableCors] attribute to the controller class.

[EnableCors(origins: "*", headers: "*", methods: "*")]
public class ReportViewerController : ApiController, IReportController
{
    // Post action for processing the RDL/RDLC report
    public object PostReportAction(Dictionary<string, object> jsonResult)
    {
        return ReportHelper.ProcessReport(jsonResult, this);
    }
    // Get action for getting resources from the report
    [System.Web.Http.ActionName("GetResource")]
    [AcceptVerbs("GET")]
    public object GetResource(string key, string resourcetype, bool isPrint)
    {
        return ReportHelper.GetResource(key, resourcetype, isPrint);
    }
    // Method that will be called when initializing the report options before the start of processing the report
    [NonAction]
    public void OnInitReportOptions(ReportViewerOptions reportOption)
    {
        // You can update report options here
    }
    // Method that will be called when reported is loaded
    [NonAction]
    public void OnReportLoaded(ReportViewerOptions reportOption)
    {
        // You can update report options here
    }
}

Compile and build the application.

You can host this service application on your machine. For example, IIS, IIS Express, or Azure can be used for RDL report processing.

Everything required for report processing is ready.

Let us create a simple JavaScript application to test the service action. You can refer to this blog for information on creating a simple JavaScript application.

Add an already created report

Create a Resources folder in the application’s root path. This is where we will keep the RDL report.

In our example, the sales-order-detail.rdl file is added to the Resources folder. You can get the sales-order-detail.rdl file from GitHub here.

Set the ReportPath and service URL

For testing purposes, set the report service URL below, which is relative to the index.html file.

reportServiceUrl: "./api/ReportViewer",
reportPath: "~/Resources/sales-order-detail.rdl"

Register the valid license token

Open the Global.asax.cs file and enter the following code snippet to register the license token in the Application_Start method.

Bold.Licensing.BoldLicenseProvider.RegisterLicense("YOUR LICENSE TOKEN");

You can download license tokens from the Bold Reports site by using our documentation.

Select Embedded Reporting > Generate License Token and copy the token.

In the Global.asax.cs file, register the license token.

To preview the report, build and run the application. You can see that the sales order detail report is loaded in the Bold Report Viewer.

ASP.NET Web API Reporting Service in Report Viewer

Visit:https://www.boldreports.com/contact/Create an ASP.NET Web API Reporting Service in Bold Reports?

Conclusion
In this blog, we learned how to create a web API service for the Bold Reports Report Viewer component using the ASP.NET Empty Web Application template in a JavaScript application. To explore this capability further, check out our sample reports and Bold Reports documentation.

If you have any questions, please post them in the comments section below. You can also contact us through our contact page, or if you already have an account, you can log in to submit your support question.

Bold Reports now offers a 15-day free trial with no credit card information required. We welcome you to start a free trial and experience Bold Reports for yourself. Give it a try and let us know what you think!

Stay tuned to our official Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Pinterest, and Instagram pages for announcements about upcoming releases.

The Difference between Drill-Down Reports and Drill-Through Reports

BarbraWeke — Thu, 04 May 2023 11:36:00 +0000

In this blog, I will explain the difference between drill-down reports and drill-through reports. Also, I will explain their features and use cases.

Drill-Down Report: Meaning
Viewing consolidated data in more detail is known as drilling down. A report that allows the user to navigate a hierarchical relationship between data is known as a drill-down report. For example, when a user clicks on a visualization, this report allows the user to view a granular level of data so that they can identify how the data was generated.

Example: Region > Country > State > Location

In the following screenshot, clothing sales by year are built upon granular data such as bib-shorts, caps, etc.

Drill-Down Report: Drilling Clothing

Drill-Through Report: Meaning

Viewing a different layer of data by clicking a visualization element is known as drilling through. Drilling through allows a user to understand another aspect of data that is related to the current data. It doesn’t show a granular view of the current data; instead, it shows a new way to analyze the current data.

In the following, clicking Sales Order Number drills through to a different perspective of the sales—the invoice.

Drill-Through Report

. In the following table, you can find the differences between drill-down and drill-through reports.

. Allows visualizing granular-level data- Allows for analyzing relevant data instead of a granular view.

. Filter parameters are not applicable for drill-down reports- Can add parameters in the drill-through report to filter data based on a selection.

. Drilling down can be achieved in a single view (i.e., you can drill down from the top level to the bottom level of the data in the same visualization).-Drilling through uses a selected data item, may use filters, and applies them to a page you are drilling through.

Drilling Down in Bold Reports

Bold Reports allows you to create reports with a drill-down feature. Drilling down is an interactive feature that can be configured on the same report, or it can open a different report using hyperlinks. Using the drill-down feature, you can show a complex report at the top level, and drilling down can show micro-level data so that users can identify the root cause of visualization findings. For more information about drill-down reports in Bold Reports, read the following blog: https://www.boldreports.com/blog/how-to-create-a-drill-down-report-using-report-designer.

Drilling Through in Bold Reports

Bold Reports also supports a drill-through feature. In drill-through reports, you can pass parameters to filter data. Using the Bold Report designer, you can configure drill-through actions for text boxes, cells of a table or matrix, images, and charts using the Link property listed in the report item properties. A drill-through action can be configured in the main report as a report action or a URL action. The report action allows the user to navigate from one report to another. For more information about drill-through reports in Bold Reports, read the following blog: https://www.boldreports.com/blog/step-by-step-procedure-to-create-a-ssrs-drillthrough-report.

https://www.boldreports.com/contact/The Difference between Drill-Down Reports and Drill-Through Reports?

Conclusion
I hope this blog provided a clear idea of the differences between drill-down and drill-through reports in Bold Reports. To explore further, go through our sample reports and Bold Reports documentation.

If you have any questions, please post them in the comments section. You can also contact us through our contact page, or, if you already have an account, you can log in to submit your support question.

Bold Reports now comes with a 15-day free trial with no credit card information required. We encourage you to start a free trial and experience Bold Reports for yourself. Give it a try and let us know what you think!

What Is Reporting?

BarbraWeke — Thu, 04 May 2023 08:42:00 +0000

In this blog, I will discuss what reporting is, its benefits, and describe several popular report types. Also, we’ll look at reporting tools and how they can ease business operations.

Let’s get started!

Agenda

A definition of reporting
Benefits of reporting
Top 5 types of reports
What is a reporting tool?
Conclusion

A definition of reporting

Reporting is the process of communicating information to a specific audience, usually presenting the data in formats such as text, grids, and charts. In business, organizations’ departments can use reports to provide a record of a particular activity and relay information on the success or shortcomings and what needs improvement. Setting clear goals and benchmarks is necessary for a company to grow, and a report demonstrates where in that climb the company currently stands.

Benefits of reporting

Next, let’s dive into the benefits of reporting.

1. Providing information

Through reporting, your organization can communicate efforts and present relevant numbers to its consumers, investors, or value chain partners in a practical, standardized way. When the organization provides easily understandable metrics, investors can feel more confident in its future, and conscientious consumers can have more faith in its products. This is an essential benefit because readily available data brings trust to the organization.

2. Commitment to transparency

Reporting displays your organization’s commitment to transparency, which helps to establish trust between the organization and its stakeholders. Transparency builds bridges among teams and lets them solve problems more quicker. The openness of clear and accurate reporting also helps keep employees informed about successes and failures and the company’s trajectory. Employees who feel they understand and are essential to the company’s strategy are more likely to give their all.

3. Attracting investment

A sensible investor wants to know the risk associated with their investments. By making your company’s complete environmental, social, and governance (ESG) risk information available in one comprehensive package, you will increase your chances of attracting the intended capital. A good reporting plan will help organizations in market research, profit margin projections, and case studies. A good organization should have a detailed plan of how much money is already invested and how much capital infusion is needed to take the business organization to the next level.

4. Competitive advantage

Reporting provides your company with a competitive advantage by:

. Distinguishing your company from competitors.
Reducing costs.

. Attracting new consumers.

. Attracting and retaining motivated and skilled employees.

. Improving performance.

Now that you know the benefits of reporting, let us go through the top five types of reports.

Top 5 types of reports

There are many types of reports. The most popular report types are informational, proposal, periodic, and functional. All these reports contain information that can be used for different purposes. For example, a report’s goal may be to track the progress of your strategies or stay compliant with the financial protocol. Let’s take a look at these top five report types.

I. Informational report
An informational report contains detailed facts without analysis. The purpose of this type of report is to educate the reader and provide them with knowledge on the topic. This includes timeline reports like annual, financial, performance, and expense reports. Information reports only provide details about a situation, they do not propose solutions or hypotheses.

II. Proposal report

A proposal report lets a writer suggest an idea for resolving a problem. One of the benefits of creating a proposal report is that it provides an overview of the entire resolution process. With the proposal report, the organization’s leaders can gauge new approaches, identify problems with them, project benefits, and estimate a budget by outlining entire ideas.

III. Periodic report
A periodic report is a document companies must file with governments in most countries with updates on the companies’ business operations. When used internally, a periodic report gives readers an analysis of current trends in the company and a comparison with its historical performance.

IV. Formal reports
Formal reports are professional, structured, and objective. In other words, they are well-researched, often long, and written in a business style that doesn’t include first-person or second-person pronouns or narrative.

V. Informal reports

Informal reports are the opposite of formal reports, containing casual language to communicate directly. They may be as short as an internal memo or a couple of pages long. They contain information, but it’s not likely to be deeply researched, they are presented in the first person and often have writing considered less professional, like contractions.

What is a reporting tool?

Reporting tools take data from different sources and present it in visuals like grids, charts, maps, and cards so that the information can be shared quickly, and future trends extrapolated. Reporting tools can produce various types of reports. They provide the ability to integrate data, visualize, schedule, and distribute it. The main goal of a reporting tool is to provide users with accurate, up-to-date information to support decision-making and drive business success. Bold Reports is a web-based reporting tool that helps you to do all of this with a simple user interface.

A supplier report created by the Bold Reports reporting tool

https://www.boldreports.com/contact/What Is Reporting??
Conclusion
I hope this blog provides a clear idea of what reporting is. To explore Bold Reports reporting tools more, look through our demo samples, reporting solutions, and documentation site.

If you have any questions, please post them in the comments section. You can also contact us through our contact page, or if you already have an account, you can log in to ask your support question.

Bold Reports offers a 15-day free trial without any credit card information required. We welcome you to start a free trial and experience Bold Reports for yourself. Let us know what you think!

Stay tuned to our official Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Pinterest, and Instagram pages for announcements about upcoming releases.

9 Steps to Integrate Report Designer in an ASP.NET Web Forms App

BarbraWeke — Thu, 04 May 2023 07:18:00 +0000

This blog is a step-by-step guide on integrating the Report Designer control into an ASP.NET Web Forms application. The Report Designer is a web-based WYSIWYG reporting tool for creating and editing RDL and RDLC reports. It has many report items to help you transform data into meaningful information and quickly build business reports.

Let’s get started!

Prerequisites

Ensure your development environment includes the following:

. Microsoft Visual Studio 2010 or later.
. Internet Information Services (IIS) 7.0+.
. .NET Framework 4.5 or newer.

Steps

Create an ASP.NET Web Forms application

. Open Visual Studio and click Create a new project.

Create a new project

Choose ASP.NET Web Application (.NET Framework) and then click Next.

Create ASP.NET Web Application

Change the project name, click Create, select Web Forms, select the Web API checkbox, and then click Create. After clicking the Create button, the default ASP.NET Web Forms application is created.

Install the NuGet packages

To get the server-side helpers to build the ASP.NET Web Forms Report Designer, you need to install the BoldReports.Web package. You also need to install the BoldReports.WebForms package to use the HTML helpers for Report Designer, and the BoldReports.JavaScript package to get the Report Designer control. The following are the steps to configure these NuGet packages for the ASP.NET Web Forms application.

Follow these steps to install the NuGet packages:

. In the Solution Explorer, right-click the project or solution and choose Manage NuGet Packages.

. In the browser tab, search for BoldReports.Web package and install it in your Web Forms application.

Install ASP.NET reporting NuGeT packages

Similarly, install the BoldReports.WebForms and BoldReports.JavaScript packages in your application.

3. Add assembly reference

. Open the Web.config file from the root folder.

. Add the BoldReports.WebForms assembly reference to the system.web – pages – controls section.

. Add Bold as the tagPrefix. The tagPrefix attribute associates a prefix with the user control. This prefix will be included in the opening tag of the user control element, as shown in the following code sample.

<configuration> .... .... <system.web> .... <pages> .... <controls> <add assembly="BoldReports.WebForms" namespace="BoldReports.WebForms" tagPrefix="Bold" /> .... </controls> </pages> </system.web> .... .... </configuration>

4. Reference the scripts and CSS

Note: You can use CDN links or local links to reference scripts and CSS.

. Open the Site.Master **page and add the following code in the **head tag.

<link href="Content/bold-reports/material/bold.reports.all.min.css" rel="stylesheet" />
<link href="Content/bold-reports/material/bold.reportdesigner.min.css" rel="stylesheet" />
<link href="Scripts/CodeMirror/lib/codemirror.css" rel="stylesheet" />
<link href="Scripts/CodeMirror/addon/hint/show-hint.css" rel="stylesheet" />
<script src="https://cdn.boldreports.com/external/jquery-1.10.2.min.js" type="text/javascript"></script>
<script src="https://cdn.boldreports.com/external/jsrender.min.js" type="text/javascript"></script>
<script src="Scripts/CodeMirror/lib/codemirror.js"></script>
<script src="Scripts/CodeMirror/addon/hint/show-hint.js"></script>
<script src="Scripts/CodeMirror/addon/hint/sql-hint.js"></script>
<script src="Scripts/CodeMirror/mode/sql/sql.js"></script>
<script src="Scripts/CodeMirror/mode/vb/vb.js"></script>
<!--Render the gauge item. Add this script only if your report contains the gauge report item. -->
<script src="Scripts/bold-reports/common/ej2-base.min.js"></script>
<script src="Scripts/bold-reports/common/ej2-data.min.js"></script>
<script src="Scripts/bold-reports/common/ej2-pdf-export.min.js"></script>
<script src="Scripts/bold-reports/common/ej2-svg-base.min.js"></script>
<script src="Scripts/bold-reports/data-visualization/ej2-circulargauge.min.js"></script>
<script src="Scripts/bold-reports/data-visualization/ej2-lineargauge.min.js"></script>
<!--Render the map item. Add this script only if your report contains the map report item.-->
<script src="Scripts/bold-reports/data-visualization/ej2-maps.min.js"></script>
<script src="Scripts/bold-reports/common/bold.reports.common.min.js"></script>
<script src="Scripts/bold-reports/common/bold.reports.widgets.min.js"></script>
<script src="Scripts/bold-reports/common/bold.report-designer-widgets.min.js"></script>
<!--Chart component script added before the web report designer script to render chart report item in reports-->
<script src="Scripts/bold-reports/data-visualization/ej.chart.min.js"></script>
<!-- Report Viewer component script-->
<script src="Scripts/bold-reports/bold.report-viewer.min.js"></script>
<!-- Report Designer component script-->
<script src="Scripts/bold-reports/bold.report-designer.min.js"></script>

Since the jQuery script reference has already been added in the head tag, remove the jQuery script reference from the asp:ScriptManager to avoid conflicts.

5. Add the ASP.NET Web Forms Report Designer to the application

Open the Default.aspx page and add. This initializes the Report Designer control.

<div style="position: absolute; height: 690px; width: 1350px">
<Bold:ReportDesigner runat="server" ID="designer"></Bold:ReportDesigner>
</div>

6. Configure the ASP.NET Web Forms Report Designer Web API

Next, you need to create a web API controller to process and render the report in Report Designer. To create it, follow these steps:

Right-click the Controller **folder and select **Add.
Select New item from the context menu.
In the Add New Item dialog, select Web API Controller Class.
Name it ReportDesignerController.cs and then click Add.
In the ReportDesignerController class, implement the IReportDesignerController interface from the namespace Web.ReportDesigner.

Paste the following code into the BoldReportsAPIController.cs file, which uses the IReportDesignerController interface and the ReportDesignerHelper and ReportHelper classes too. These classes are explained in the following.

using BoldReports.Web.ReportDesigner;
using BoldReports.Web.ReportViewer;
using System;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.IO;
using System.Web;
using System.Web.Http;

namespace ReportDesignerWebFormASPDemo.Controllers
{
public class ReportDesignerController : ApiController, IReportDesignerController
{
/// <summary>
/// Get the path of specific file
/// </summary>
/// <param name="itemName">Name of the file to get the full path</param>
/// <param name="key">The unique key for report designer</param>
/// <returns>Returns the full path of file</returns>
[NonAction]
private string GetFilePath(string itemName, string key)
{
string dirPath = Path.Combine(HttpContext.Current.Server.MapPath("~/") + "Cache", key);

if (!Directory.Exists(dirPath))
{
Directory.CreateDirectory(dirPath);
}

return Path.Combine(dirPath, itemName);
}

/// <summary>
/// Action (HttpGet) method for getting resource of images in the report.
/// </summary>
/// <param name="key">The unique key for request identification.</param>
/// <param name="image">The name of requested image.</param>
/// <returns>Returns the image as HttpResponseMessage content.</returns>
[System.Web.Http.ActionName("GetImage")]
[AcceptVerbs("GET")]
public object GetImage(string key, string image)
{
return ReportDesignerHelper.GetImage(key, image, this);
}

/// <summary>
/// Action (HttpPost) method for posting the request for designer actions.
/// </summary>
/// <param name="jsonData">A collection of keys and values to process the designer request.</param>
/// <returns>Json result for the current request.</returns>
public object PostDesignerAction(Dictionary<string, object> jsonData)
{
//Processes the designer request and returns the result.
return ReportDesignerHelper.ProcessDesigner(jsonData, this, null);
}

/// <summary>
/// Sets the resource into storage location.
/// </summary>
/// <param name="key">The unique key for request identification.</param>
/// <param name="itemId">The unique key to get the required resource.</param>
/// <param name="itemData">Contains the resource data.</param>
/// <param name="errorMessage">Returns the error message, if the write action is failed.</param>
/// <returns>Returns true, if resource is successfully written into storage location.</returns>
[NonAction]
public bool SetData(string key, string itemId, ItemInfo itemData, out string errorMessage)
{
errorMessage = string.Empty;

if (itemData.Data != null)
{
File.WriteAllBytes(this.GetFilePath(itemId, key), itemData.Data);
}
else if (itemData.PostedFile != null)
{
var fileName = itemId;
if (string.IsNullOrEmpty(itemId))
{
fileName = Path.GetFileName(itemData.PostedFile.FileName);
}
itemData.PostedFile.SaveAs(this.GetFilePath(fileName, key));
}
return true;
}

/// <summary>
/// Gets the resource from storage location.
/// </summary>
/// <param name="key">The unique key for request identification.</param>
/// <param name="itemId">The unique key to get the required resource.</param>
/// <returns>Returns the resource data and error message.</returns>
[NonAction]
public ResourceInfo GetData(string key, string itemId)
{
var resource = new ResourceInfo();
try
{
var filePath = this.GetFilePath(itemId, key);
if (itemId.Equals(Path.GetFileName(filePath), StringComparison.InvariantCultureIgnoreCase) && File.Exists(filePath))
{
resource.Data = File.ReadAllBytes(filePath);
}
else
{
resource.ErrorMessage = "File not found from the specified path";
}
}
catch (Exception ex)
{
resource.ErrorMessage = ex.Message;
}

return resource;
}

/// <summary>
/// Action (HttpPost) method for posted or uploaded file actions.
/// </summary>
public void UploadReportAction()
{
//Processes the designer file upload request's.
ReportDesignerHelper.ProcessDesigner(null, this, System.Web.HttpContext.Current.Request.Files[0]);
}

/// <summary>
/// Send a GET request and returns the requested resource for a report.
/// </summary>
/// <param name="key">The unique key to get the desired resource.</param>
/// <param name="resourcetype">The type of the requested resource.</param>
/// <param name="isPrint">If set to <see langword="true"/>, then the resource is generated for printing.</param>
/// <returns> Resource object for the given key</returns>
[System.Web.Http.ActionName("GetResource")]
[AcceptVerbs("GET")]
public object GetResource(string key, string resourcetype, bool isPrint)
{
//Returns the report resource for the requested key.
return ReportHelper.GetResource(key, resourcetype, isPrint);
}

/// <summary>
/// Report Initialization method that is triggered when report begin processed.
/// </summary>
/// <param name="reportOptions">The ReportViewer options.</param>
[NonAction]
public void OnInitReportOptions(ReportViewerOptions reportOption)
{
//You can update report options here
}

/// <summary>
/// Report loaded method that is triggered when report and sub report begins to be loaded.
/// </summary>
/// <param name="reportOptions">The ReportViewer options.</param>
[NonAction]
public void OnReportLoaded(ReportViewerOptions reportOption)
{
//You can update report options here
}

/// <summary>
/// Action (HttpPost) method for posting the request for report process.
/// </summary>
/// <param name="jsonData">The JSON data posted for processing report.</param>
/// <returns>The object data.</returns>
public object PostReportAction(Dictionary<string, object> jsonData)
{
//Processes the report request and returns the result.
return ReportHelper.ProcessReport(jsonData, this as IReportController);
}
}
}

What is the IReportDesignerController interface?

The IReportDesignerController interface contains the required actions and helper method declarations for processing the designer file and data actions. The following tables explain the actions and helper methods.

. GetResource- Gets the images used in the report from the server at the time of preview in the Designer.

. OnlnitReportOptions- Invoked from a ReportHelper when the report is about to be processed at the time of preview. Before the report loads, you can customize CSV delimiters as follows:
reportOption.ReportModel.CsvOptions.FieldDelimiter = “,”;
. OnReportLoaded-Invoked from a ReportHelper when the report and subreport start loading for report rendering.
You can use this method to customize the report settings if needed at the time of previewing it in the Designer. For example, you can change the UserID for the report as follows:

reportOption.ReportModel.UserProfile.UserID = “NewUserID”;

. PostReportAction-Processes the report request on the server side and returns the processed reporting result to the client side.

. PostDesignerAction-Saves the report to the client.

. UploadReportAction- Receives the upload data from the Report Designer for adding images and opening reports on the client side

. SetData- Invokes from a ReportDesignerHelper to write the resource file information to the server side that we are receiving with the UploadReportAction.

. GetData- Invokes a ReportDesignerHelper to read the resource file information that has been saved using SetData for further report-building processes.

7. Add routing information

Routing is the process of directing an HTTP request to a controller. The action parameter names the action method on the controller, which is used to map the method in the controller.

.Open the App_Start folder of your application.

. Open the WebApiConfig.cs **file and modify the **routeTemplate property in the Register method to include the action parameter in the URL as shown in the following sample.

public static class WebApiConfig
{
public static void Register(HttpConfiguration config)
{
// Web API configuration and services.
// Web API routes.
config.MapHttpAttributeRoutes();
config.Routes.MapHttpRoute(
name: "DefaultApi",
routeTemplate: "api/{controller}/{action}/{id}",
defaults: new { id = RouteParameter.Optional }
);
}
}

8. Set the ASP.NET Web Forms Report Designer service URL
To browse, open, and save reports in the application, set the web API controller name to the ServiceUrl property of the Report Designer. In the Default.aspx **page, within the **ReportDesigner tag, add the ServiceUrl as shown:

<Bold:ReportDesigner runat="server" ID="designer" ServiceUrl="/api/ReportDesigner"></Bold:ReportDesigner>

9. Run the ASP.NET Web Forms Report Designer application

Everything is set up. To preview the Report Designer, build and run the application. You can now create stunning professional reports from here!

Click Run **or press **F5 to launch the application. When you run the application, the Report Designer will be rendered as shown in the following image

Report Designer in ASP.NET Web Forms Application

Visit: https://www.boldreports.com/contact/9 Steps to Integrate Report Designer in an ASP.NET Web Forms App?
Conclusion
I hope this blog provided sufficient guidance for integrating the Report Designer component into an ASP.NET Web Forms application. To learn more about the Report Designer for ASP.NET Web Forms and its report items, look through our documentation. To experience the features live, check out our demo samples and solutions.

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