I need to define my company-branded color palette for SSRS. This should be re-usable over several reports. I realized that I sometimes need to redefine the custom palette again and again, sometimes even on different controls in the same report, but always on a new report. I know I could copy and paste the colors in the RDL file but I want to avoid that
So I wondered since I know we can write extensions for reporting services, if there is a chance to change or create one of the default color palettes that already are shipped with ssrs? I looked around to find their definition on the Reporting Server but no luck. Anyone knows more?
I haven't found a way to change the default palettes in SSRS or even add a new one that can be used.
The most helpful thing I found to do was to create a custom palette in one chart. Then you can use that same custom palette in other charts. You can copy and paste the chart into new reports to use the same palette or make a template report with the chart (and the custom colors in it).
http://clarkcreations.net/blog/5-simple-things-i-always-forget-about-ssrs-custom-color-palette/
My current problem with using the custom palette is that the border has to be the same color as the fill color. This doesn't work with my new color scheming with dark borders and light fills:
I've got around this by creating a table in the database with the 9 corporate colour schemes included. I've also adapted the default report template so that it includes a dataset called "Palette" for the colours. I then just use =First(Fields!Official,"Palette") as an expression for the colours where needed. I also have to change the colours for staff with particular visual needs so using this I can select the scheme appropriate for the staff member whilst having the official palette used in other cases.
Related
I want to add solid white indicator arrows into my ssrs report, but the closest I appear to be able to get is an arrow with a grey border/shadow/gradient effect, like this:
I've tried tweaking every property setting I can find to suppress this gradient effect, but no joy... Is there a way to configure these indicators to be a simple solid colour?
Alternatively, is it possible to upload my own image files into ssrs to use instead?
Appreciate any guidance.
To answer your alternate question, Yes, you can add your own images. They can either be embedded in the report or stored in a location that the report can access. Be careful because the location the report can access locally during development is not the same as the location once it's deployed. You can use an expression to change the image name so that it is dynamic.
We're atm creating Reports with the reporting service, but it's not quite defined where to use which Font.
My easiest approach would have been to create a Variable per Report and set the Font in the expression:
Variables!FontStyle.Value
Sadly it doesn't seem to work. If I print the Variable-Text, I see the Font, but it seems like I need some sort of conversion.
As far as I found I've not seen any possibility to do such things, the only Idea would be with HTML-Tags, but I guess since there is a Font-Expression, there is a easier ways.
BTW: I'm really having a lot of small stuff, which bugs me a bit in SSRS, has someone some good articles / books for "Best practices" etc.?
Thanks in advance.
If you want to use a font style for the entire report you can set it with a variable. In the report properties there is a sub heading called Variables, click the dotted button to add a variable. In the report properties window click Add then give it a name you will refer to later like myFont, enter Pristina into the value as an example. Click okay.
Now to call your variable right click on some text and go to properties. In the text box property window click Font and then the fx button next to the font name, then enter your font variable you set earlier =Variables!myFont.Value.
There you go
I'm encountering a problem on Reporting Services, using BIDS (2008).
I need to create a report which has a transparent body background.
I mean, when I export it (TIFF or PNG, whatever), I need the whole background to be transparent.
When I edit my report, I check that the "Body" -> "BackgroundColor" is set to "No color" (putting "Transparent" as a value automatically brings it back to "No color").
But once my report is deployed and I generate it through the Reporting Services web interface, exporting it to TIFF format only gives me a report ... with a white background.
So here is my question : is it a well-known issue ? Is there a way to get my body background transparent ?
Maybe an easy way exists and I'm just missing it, but I have no idea what I'm doing wrong.
To my best knowledge this is not possible when exporting to Tiff / PNG. You could however use a Batch background removal tool like ImageMagick;
http://www.imagemagick.org/
It is a command line tool, so a lot of automatizing / batch processing possibilities. It can be a bit intimidating at first but here is a easy tutorial addressing white background removal with imagemagick.
http://www.vectorns.com/blog/technical-articles/18-how-to-remove-white-background-from-a-picture
I have several charts built in SSRS and Crystal Reports. I'm trying to create a standard colour palette for them that matches our company brand standards, and want to apply a specific colour to each series value. For example, assume the series values are:
Watermelons (always make this pink),
Cherries (always make red),
Grapes (always make green), and
Lemons (always make yellow).
Is there a way to do this in either SSRS or Crystal Reports (v 11)?
Thank you very much.
I don't know Crystal, but for SSRS:
In the Chart definition for Values, you can set the Color property using an expression. The best way would be to pass in an extra column in the source Dataset which gives the required Color values. Then your Color expression can just refer to that column.
You will need to copy that Expression into to each series in each Chart object.
I'm working on a reporting app which displays incoming data as pie by default. We'd like to offer the user the ability to switch to bar, or column, or area, or any of the other charts with the click of a button. Since we already have the data in the app, it should be fairly simple no? Does anyone have an idea of how I might approach this?
andy
You can approach this a couple different ways. If it was me I would either set up a view stack with each of the chart types you want the user to switch to and they you can simply change the viewstack selectedIndex. Alternatively, you can have just a single chart holder container. Then just make function to dynamically generate each chart (Example). Then all you need to do is remove the existing and add the new chart.
I accomplish this by creating a state for each specific chart type. Then just change between states based on user input. You can use one data provider for each chart or create specific data providers for each.