The Telerik Report Designer: More Powerful Than Ever Webinar

Slides, Source Code and Video to the "The Telerik Report Designer: More Powerful Than Ever" Webinar Now Available

We want to thank you all for attending the Telerik Reporting Webinar. As promised, all of the materials are now available for you to download and explore on your own. If you have any questions, please feel free to leave a comment below. We also suggest that you download Telerik Reporting and the new standalone Report Designer if you haven’t already done so.

For Those Who Couldn’t Attend, What is the Telerik Reporting?

Telerik Reporting is a lightweight reporting solution for all .NET cloud, web, and desktop platforms (Azure, Silverlight, WPF, ASP.NET and Windows Forms) which targets developers and end-users alike. Rich interactive and reusable reports can be created by developers in Visual Studio, and by end users in the desktop-based Report Designer. With the help of Telerik Reporting users can examine and probe data, export reports to Microsoft Office Word and Excel for further analysis, and even present them as PowerPoint documents.

Resources: Telerik Reporting Webinar Materials

Slides, Source Code and the recorded Webinar Video are now available.

What Did We Cover?

• Introductions
• Release Summary
• The new standalone Report Designer
  • Import existing report wizard
  • Custom expressions
  • Save as Template
• Demos
• Resources
• Q/A

Here is a transcript of the Q&A

Q: Is Telerik discontinuing or downplaying Reporting from .NET - no Webinar this release for it

A: Absolutely not! The 2012 Q3 brought many enhancements to Visual Studio reporting as well as the new standalone Report Designer. Being limited in how much time we can spend on any one product during webinar week, we decided to focus on all of the new functionality in the Report Designer. Please refer to the release notes to get a full list of what’s new in this release.

Q: Will the slides be made available?

A: Yes! Please refer to the resources section of this post.

Q: What are the licensing details regarding the standalone Report Designer?

A: Your developer license allows you to distribute the Report Designer for free to your users.

Q: Does this edition support Visual Studio 2010?

A: Yes!

Q: Does Telerik Reporting support Internet Explorer 10?

A: Yes!

Q: What is the difference between "Save Report" and "Export Template"?

A: Report Templates are similar to templates in Microsoft Word©. When opened, templates immediately create a new report, thus preserving the format of the template. Much simpler than copying, pasting, and renaming reports.

Q: When setting the reference for the custom expressions for is that for the standalone Telerik Report Designer or the one in Visual Studio 2012

A: That is for the standalone Report Designer. In Visual Studio Reporting projects, you can directly add references to you other assemblies.

Q: Can the Report Designer use a POCO class for a Data Source?

A: Yes, with the Object Data Source

Q: Can the Report Designer user JSON and/or OData as a data source?

A: Not directly, but you can create an object graph from the JSON or OData data, and then use the Object Data Source in your report.

Q: Can you create reports that use platform independent data sources?

A: You certainly write .NET code that takes advantage of any service, convert that data into an object graph, and then expose that data through the Object Data Source.

Q: Can I use reports files without compiling into an assembly?

A: The Report Designer works with report files that are not compile into an assembly. The import report wizard allows you to easily convert compiled reports into reports that are compatible with the format used by the Report Designer.

Q: Which is better for the web-based reports – Silverlight or WebForms?

A: We support both. Please refer to our platform guidance document for more direction on when to use Silverlight or ASP.NET WebForms.

Q: Can you import Crystal Reports?

A: Yes, version 10.2 and later.

Q: Can the standalone Report Designer handle Cube data?

A: Yes, by using the Cube Data Source.

Q: Are there plans for Telerik Reporting to NOT require .NET framework 2.0 SP2?

A: We are currently looking at the impact of moving to .NET 3.5, but need to carefully consider the ramifications of such a move so that it doesn’t negatively impact existing customers and applications.

Q: What is the minimum system requirement for the Telerik Reporting standalone Report Designer for re-distributing it?

A: Operation systems: Windows XP, Windows Vista, Windows 7, Windows 8
.NET Framework 4.0 Full Profile

Q: Does Telerik Reporting support Oracle?

A: Yes!

Q: Was any work done on the PDF export?

A: Yes. Please refer to the release notes for more information.

Q: Does Telerik Reporting support Windows Server 2008 and IIS7?

A: You can run Telerik Report applications anywhere you can run .NET 2.0 SP2 and later.

Q: Any new controls to better display reports in mobile devices?

A: We are actively working on this, but I don’t have a time frame on availability.

Q: Is there support for MySQL?

A: Yes, both through the SQL Data Source as well as Entity Framework and Open Access data sources.

Q: I'm totally new to Telerik reporting, is the web report viewer as performant as the windows-based report viewer?

A: Yes

Q: Is there support for 3D objects?

A: Please contact support with your 3D requirements.

Q: Are QR codes supported in the barcode report item?

A: Not at this time.

Q: Can you import reports from SQL Server Reporting Services?

A: Not at this time.

Q: Does the report control work with MVC?

A: You can use the ASP.NET WebForms report viewer in ASP.NET MVC by placing it into a WebForms page within your MVC application.

Q: Is there support for report skinning in Telerik Reports?

A: Yes. Reports can be styled using a HTML/CSS like cascading styles and style sheets. Please refer to the Styling Reports help topic.

Q: My end-users like Excel Pivot Tables, is the "crosstab" capabilities in this tool aimed at that audience?

A: Yes.

Q: There is a spelling error in the stand alone Report Designer.

A: The development team has been notified. Thank you for pointing this out.

Q: Does the Export Report Template work in both the standalone designer and Visual Studio Designer?

A: At this time the Export Report Template only works in the standalone Report Designer.

Q: Have you got a web designer to allow users to construct reports directly in an ASP.NET page?

A: Not at this time.

Q: Does standalone Report Designer work with SharePoint 2010

A: Not at this time

Q: Can I use user-defined-functions, written with T-SQL in MS SQL Server in Report Designer?

A: Yes, but you would have to wrap them in a stored procedure.

Q: Is the documentation going to be updated?

A: We work very hard on making sure the document is current and accurate. Please send an email to support if you find any errors or gaps.

Q: What is the best way to display formed text like: dates and currency, inside an HTML textbox

A: Telerik makes many controls that can help with displaying formatted text in HTML pages. Please refer to http://www.telerik.com for more information.

Q: Are there any events for report objects?

A: There are several events for report objects as well as the report itself. Please click on the Events button in the properties pane to see what events are exposed.

Q: When a report is exported does the sub-report definition get embedded in the same file?

A: Yes, the master report and all nested sub-reports are exported into the same document.

Q: Any improvement to charts

A: Many improvements are currently in the backlog. I don’t have any dates or specifics at this time, but please follow the blogs and watch for the roadmap as it gets updated.

Q: Is Telerik in the future going to improve the export to excel both in versions and volume of records

A: This question is unclear. Currently Telerik Reporting supports both BIFF v* (MS Excel ‘97+) as well as the OpenXML format for MS Office 2007+.

Q: Is the user report designer still just a WPF app or is the now a SL version of it available?

A: There is not a SilverLight version, and we do not have one in the plans. However, we are working on an HTML5 version.

Q: Is there a direct export to Excel functionality, rather than going via Report Viewer

A: You can use the Telerik.Reporting.Processing.ReportProcessor class to render/print reports programmatically –or- use the report viewer controls to embed the reports into its applications.

Q: Is the discount valid for renewals?

A: No, the discount is not valid for renewals. You can use the coupon towards new purchases and upgrades only.

Wrap-up

Thanks for watching and if you have any questions or comments then please let us know. Also, before you go, we need your help. Telerik is driven by customer feedback. This is where we need you to tell us what you want to see in the future. Whether it is new controls, additional features or content based off of existing controls, then just drop a comment in this post or send us a tweet on Twitter at: @skimedic.