Report Designer
The Telerik Report Designer empowers report authors with creating, editing and sharing ad-hoc reports. It is a standalone Windows tool powered by the Telerik Reporting engine, which uses the latest UI standards to assist power users with the process of creating reports, analyzing data on their machines, and exporting and sharing report documents.
The Report Designer is part of the Telerik Reporting package. It is a single EXE file, which simplifies its distribution, and does not require installation. Visual Studio is not required to create reports with the Telerik Report Designer.
The Report Design Canvas
The stand-alone report designer offers a "What You See Is What You Get" (WYSIWYG) canvas for report generation, which allows users and developers to add and edit charts, tables, and other report items, style them, fill them with data, and add calculations. Item rotation, in-line editing, report zooming, drag-and-drop data binding, and a slew of additional features are also available directly in the report designer.
To make the process of accurate positioning, aligning, and sizing of report elements easy and intuitive, Telerik Reporting implements some techniques used in drawing software, such as gridlines, item snapping for perfect positioning, on-canvas item dimensions, and report panning.
enlarge screenshot
The Interface
The Report Designer comes with a RibbonBar which contains all needed functions, which is intuitive and easy to use. The multi-document interface allows authoring and viewing multiple reports simultaneously. There are additional tools for easier report authoring: Report/Data/Group Explorer, Property Browser, Report/Table/Crosstab Wizards, editors, etc.
Report and Print Preview
The report preview functions are built in the Report Designer, so no additional viewers are needed to view reports. The interactive Report Preview is meant for onscreen viewing of the report and allows for interaction with the report. The Print Preview is dedicated for printing purposes only and shows the report as it would appear after being printed or exported. It does not offer interactivity.
enlarge screenshot
Populating with Data
The Report Designer can display data from any SQL database (incl. MS SQL Server, Oracle, etc.) and Microsoft Analysis Services Cubes. Since this is a client application, there is no programmatic control over the reports, which means that no events and no object/OpenAccess ORM/Entity Framework data source are supported.
Exporting Reports
Reports can be exported to the most common document formats directly from the Report Designer. The supported export formats are PDF, Excel 97-2010, Word, PowerPoint, RTF, CSV, MHTML, and all image and graphic formats supported by GDI+ (JPEG, PNG, GIF, BMP, TIFF, etc.).
Saving, Sharing, and Viewing Reports
The Telerik Report Designer saves all reports in the Telerik Reporting Definition XML format (.trdx). The files can be distributed via email, and can be viewed in all available report viewers (for ASP.NET, Silverlight, WinForms, and WPF).
Effective Report Wizards for Quick Report Creation
Creating new reports should not be an adventure. The Report Designer provides a Report Wizard which helps you create your report in a flash. It is started automatically when a new report is created, and helps you select the data source, and choose one of the predefined layouts and report themes. In addition to creating reports, the Report Wizard also provides a handy way to configure label settings in case you decide to create a Label Report.
With the help of the numerous other wizards and tools, the process of creating reports is extremely intuitive, with almost no learning involved.
enlarge screenshot
Visualize and Present Data with Drag and Drop
All Telerik Reporting items, such as charts, tables, crosstabs, and data source components are used with simple drag-and-drop. Upon dropping the item on the report canvas, custom-built wizards will be invoked which will help you (or the end-user) to set up the report items in a fast and efficient manner.
Styling and Formatting Reports
The Report Designer from Telerik come with handy tools and wizards which will assist you in styling the reports the way you need them to. The designers offer reusable styles (copy style from one item and apply it to another), basic HTML text formatting, and Excel-like conditional formatting.
enlarge screenshot
Quick Access to Report Elements
The Report Explorer displays the tree representation of the report structure, including the items used, all parameters/filters, as well as the global styles that are being used in the report. Using the Explorer, you can quickly access any element in your report, a simple or a complex one, and create/edit styles and parameters, which makes the report management process much easier.
enlarge screenshot
Data Explorer for Drag and Drop Data Binding
The Data Explorer shows the relevant database and calculated fields (preset formulas) that are available in your report. You can use it to drag and drop a field onto your report for quick, codeless, and intuitive quick item creation and binding.
