I have a report that can be VERY expansive - potentially returning hundreds of thousands of rows and taking 15+ minutes to render. The users have four inputs including two dates indicating the report range and two filters that default to (All). What I'd like to do is throw up a warning to the user if they try to run the report without selecting a single entity from either of the two filters, or if the user attempts to bring up more than one week's worth of data at a time.
Is there any kind of checking I can do at runtime in the report (short of coding it in the procedure) to warn the user that they are about to get more data than they can handle?
I would add a Hidden Parameter e.g. Accept_Run_Time_Warnings, with Static values e.g. Yes or No. The Default value would be set by an expression, based on the prior Parameters and your criteria e.g. entities selected, date ranges etc. If those conditions are met, Default = No, otherwise Default = Yes.
Then I would add a textbox to the top of the report body with the warning text to show the users, finishing with something like "Click here to continue with these parameters". This textbox would be hidden if Accept_Run_Time_Warnings = Yes. This textbox would have an Action to run the same report, passing the same paramters, but with the Accept_Run_Time_Warnings = Yes.
I would hide all other report body tables charts etc if Accept_Run_Time_Warnings = No.
I would edit the parameters for the main datasets to test Accept_Run_Time_Warnings - if No then they can pass non-existent values (to speed the dataset execution), e.g.
=Iif ( Parameters!Accept_Run_Time_Warnings.Value = "No" , "DUMMMY" , Parameters!Customer.Value)
Thanks for the ideas. We decided instead to break the report into two reports and removed the "All" option from either one of the two selection drop-downs on each report. The titles on the individual reports give a clue to the user about which one to use and clue them into the need for a selection.
Related
Using Report Builder 3.0 against cubes which are produced overnight.
The report I'm designing is used to archive or transfer (physical) files for patients. Users run the report, print it & then attach it to files that are then sent to a central area which will archive/send the files on.
The report has a number of parameters which is designed to return a single patient. This all works fine.
One of the parameters (#prmReason) is a single choice on what is to happen to the files, eg, "Transfer" (transfer files to another office), "Archive - closed", "Archive - deceased", "Archive - excess" (office space is limited, so staff archive off 'older' files).
One of the fields returned is CloseReason. This field always has a value. If the field is empty in the database (as the client hasn't closed), then it will contain the value: "Unknown".
This field (amongst others) are either displayed or hidden, depending on #prmReason. Again - all working without a problem.
Now for the tricky bit.
If the #prmReason = "Archive - closed" or "Archive - deceased" then the report will display CloseReason.
The problem is if CloseReason = "Unknown" then I need to know the why the file is closed & display it on the report.
I want users to be able to choose a value from a list of closure reasons. I then want the choice to be displayed on the report. Obviously if there is a genuine reason then display this value.
So the effect I'm after is:
User selects parameters & runs report.
Report then checks to see why report is being run (eg #prmReason).
If #prmReason =("Archive - closed" OR "Archive - deceased") AND CloseReason = "Unknown"
Then somehow produce a list of CloseReasons that the user can select. This value is then displayed on the report.
I can even cope with it being a free text field. Just something so that the central area can update the database if necessary & save a phone call/email etc.
(Yes, I realise that I can have the list as a series of tickboxes that the user ticks after the report is printed, but this would be a useful ability in other reports).
EDIT: empty value of CloseReasons conflicted with stackoverflow formatting (sorry didn't review post properly). Value is actually less then symbol then the word Unknown and then greater than symbol. It doesn't really affect the problem
You could add an additional hidden parameter.
If this parameter is not set then display an small table on your report that has a list of CloseReasons.
You then set table cell's action property to open the a report, choose your existing report as the report to open but this time you can pass a value for the final parameter, which, as well as displaying the Close reason in your report, would also hide the close reason choices table described above.
UPDATE To make clear more clear.
The following is based on the Northwind sample database. I have a shared data source pointing to this database.
Create new report.
Add a data source pointing to the shared Northwind data source
Add a new data set pointing to the data source above with the following query
SELECT
EmployeeID,
FirstName, LastName, Address, City, Country, Title, Notes
FROM Employees
WHERE EmployeeID = #EmployeeID
Add some of the fields to the report to show some basic info.
We now have a simple report with a single parameter #EmployeeID
Next we want to show some actions for each employee. For flexibility, I'm making this list dynamic based on the employee's Country. This list could be static.
Create a new dataset dsActions with the following query
DECLARE #actions TABLE(ActionID int, ActionLabel varchar(20))
-- Get employees country
DECLARE #Country varchar(20) = (SELECT Country FROM Employees WHERE EmployeeID = #EmployeeID)
IF #Country = 'UK'
BEGIN
INSERT INTO #actions VALUES
(1,'Sack them'),
(2,'Buy them a pint'),
(3,'Promote')
END
ELSE
BEGIN
INSERT INTO #actions VALUES
(1,'Fire them'),
(2,'High 5 them'),
(3,'Ask them to run for office')
END
SELECT * FROM #actions
Add a table to the report to show these values.
At the moment my design looks like this. (All the expressions are simple fields from the first dataset to show the employee details, nothing special)
And when I run it I get this.
OK, now all the basics are done, we need to be able to call this report again, but with an action already chosen. We'll make the actions table clickable and pass the action's label to the report.
It's the same report, we will only ever have a single report.
First, add a new parameter called action to the report and make it hidden. Add a default value of 'noaction'.
Next we want to only show our actions table if the action parameter is set to 'noaction'. To do this, set the Hidden property of the action table (tablix) to the following
=Parameters!action.Value <> "noaction"
Next we want to add a text box that displays the result action parameter, but only when the action parameter is not noaction.
So add a text, set it's expression to =Parameters!action.Value and the hidden property to =Parameters!action.Value = "noaction"
Finally, we need to make our actions list call our report but with a specific action. To do this we need to modify the actions table.
First save the report, whatever name you choose is the name you will select as the target report as the report will call itself.
Right-click the cell that contains the ActionLabel and go to the text box properties.
Select the Action tab and then choose "Go to report". Choose the name of the report you are currently working on (this actual report as the report will call itself).
Set EmployeeID parameter to [#EmployeeID] and the action parameter to [ActionLabel]
I've used the label for simplicity but you could pass the ActionID as long as you account for this in the text box that displays the action.
Optionally you could format the text so it looks like a link,
The final design and action/parameter setup looks like this
When I first run the report I get the following...
As soon as I click one of the actions, I then get this...
Hopefully that's clear now.
I have a SSRS report in which i have a parameter which comes in a dropdown it is a multiselect parameter, now i want that at most user should be able to select only two values from the dropdown.
Although you can't stop the user from selecting more than two values, you can keep the report from being shown if they do. First, I created a red-text textbox at the top of my report that holds an error message. Something like:
You selected more than two values for ReportParameter1, try again...
Then, I set the visibility of this message with an expression (for hidden) set to =(Parameters!ReportParameter1.Count<=2). Now this error will show only when the user has selected more than two parameters.
I then hide the content of my report with a visibility expression of =(Parameters!ReportParameter1.Count>2). Note that you can simply put all your content in a rectangle and then hide the rectangle.
If your user selects more than two parameters, only the red error message is shown. If they select two or less, everything looks normal. I would also write your stored procedure in a way so that if a user selects too many values for the parameter, it won't return any data.
This is not possible. A multi-select parameter is that and just that: a parameter that lets you select multiple values.
If you will always only have two values that need selecting, the easiest way of implementing this would be to have two single value parameters labelled as Value 1 and Value 2 which are then both referenced in your report query.
There are workarounds as suggested by #Kyle Williamson in his answer, but there is no exact answer possible as this facility is not present in SSRS
I am creating a report in SSRS which displays information about properties in a county. The user can select a district for which to view properties. Some districts are small, having only 10 properties, others are large with close to 8000 properties. For the large properties, the System.OutOfMemory exception gets thrown when trying to run the report. To work around this, I added 2 parameters where the users can specify the range of properties to look at (1-500, 7-2231, etc). The default values for these parameters are 1 and the count of properties, so that all properties are reported by default.
The problem I'm having is that after you select a district and the parameters are populated based on that district, if you then change your district, the default values don't change. So if the first district you select has only 10 properties and the second one has 500, you'll only see the first 10 in the second district. I've done some research to see if it's possible to refresh the default, but all the solutions I've seen are using dropdown parameters, which is impractical for what I'm doing. Is it possible to refresh the default values of a non-dropdown parameter?
I don't think this is possible in the way you're asking for. A workaround would be to give the user a parameter to choose between "use defaults" and "use entered values", and then don't put defaults in the other parameters. If the users understand what they'll get if they use defaults, this will work the same way, though it's a bit more confusing.
In your dataset, you'd have to have an OR or CASE that tested the value of the #default parameter to determine whether to use entered parameters or defaults.
I have a multi value parameter in my SSRS Report. I want to find out whether (Select All) is checked in that parameter.
In other words, whether all the values in the parameter are checked or only some values are checked.
Is it possible?
I am able to find out number of selected values through Parameters!Parameter.Count. Is there a way to find out total of items in that parameter?
In case anyone is still having issues doing this, I just coded this easy fix.
=IIF(COUNTROWS("dataset").Equals(Parameters!parameter.Count),"it is equal","this is not equal")
For the specific use-case of showing the selected filter on your report in a textbox, here's the expression that will show "All" if "(Select All)" is selected, otherwise it will show all the selected values as a comma-separated list:
=IIF(
Parameters!YourMultivalueParam.Count = countrows("YourDataset"),
"All",
Join(Parameters!YourMultivalueParam.Label,", ")
)
(split onto multiple lines for readability)
countrows reference: https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd255215.aspx
Credit to other answers, just want to extend them for this common scenario.
Your approach sounds good: I would make the options for the parameter come from a dataset.
Then you can use =COUNTROWS("DataSetName") to return the total number of options for your parameter and compare this with Parameters!*Parameter*.Count as you suggest.
I also faced this problem and I solved it this way.
I have one multivalued parameter named "Carrier". Then I have added one parameter "CarrierHidden" which is same as "Carrier" only thing is I made its Visibility as Hidden.
="Carrier=" & Switch(Parameters!CarrierHidden.Count = Parameters!Carrier.Count, "All",
Parameters!Carrier.Count > 1 And Parameters!CarrierHidden.Count > Parameters!Carrier.Count, "Multi",
Parameters!Carrier.Count = 1, Parameters!Carrier.Label(0))
The easy way will be to count the number of the selected parameters and compare them to the dataset
=IIF(Parameters!company_number.Count = CountRows("Dataset1"), True, False)
The problem is if you're trying to pull something for another data set then cross referencing the row count in another dataset won't work. You will have to go with what the previous post states. Create an internal parameter of the exact type and assign the default value to the entire dataset. That way you have the max count of the rows since the hidden parameter.count = rowscount. That way you can use it within another dataset also provided that dataset is AFTER the first one is populated.
According to Microsoft's SSRS help search:
=Parameters!<ParameterName>.Count
Returns the integer value 1. For a single-value parameter, the count is always 1.
I verified this does indeed work, check the integer returned for the built-in parameter count field.
Allow multiple values on a parameter selection. Checking the value of the above field will let you know how many values the user actually chose.
In my situation, I allow multiple values on company number. This gives users the ability to choose one company to report on or several at once. Per client request, if they choose more than one, display data horizontally. If only one company is chosen in the parameter list, show the data vertically and hide the other tablix.
So my visibility show or hide expression looks like this in the one tablix:
=IIF(Parameters!company_number.Count > 1, True, False)
and like this in the other:
=IIF(Parameters!company_number.Count = 1,True,False)
I have a report created in SSRS in client mode, which is run disconnected: I create the data source in code and pass to the report as a DataView. It works ok.
But I need to be able to reference from the project to some objects (variables, whatever) from my application, as follows:
I need some totals that are not calculated based on data in report. e.g. the reports show total sales in a period, with own total, but I need to display a field in report footer - previous month total (actually they are about 10 other "previous" totals).
I need to have some columns show / hide based on some settings in the application (e.g. I have application option : Show Previous month sales)
Any thoughts on how to do this?
Thank you
Q1-> In order to use data in your reports, you need to specify the data inside of a Datasource object. You cannot simply use the variables if that is what your intentions were. So yes, you are doing this the right way. *** Sorry, you could theoretically used Report Parameters for this.
Q2-> This is the real reason to use Report Parameters. You can pass parameters to the report to do exactly this. If the HideColumn parameter (for example) is set to true, you could hide all the columns that need to be hidden.
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms251750%28VS.80%29.aspx
For question 1 - the data - the easiest approach would be to create a DataTable in memory and add it as another dataset OR to add fields for your original dataview that contain these values.
Question 2 - To hide or show the columns based on settings make the column visibility an expression based on the value of a parameter, in your code behind set the parameter value to your application setting.