SSRS Matrix banded rows - reporting-services

Question

I'm looking to do banded rows in SSRS.
I've Googled it but only seen examples of it in a table Report not a tablix with multiple groupings.
Lets say I have a dataset
Employee..............Product.........Date...............Amount
Jose..................TV..............2013-12-01.........150
Jose..................TV..............2013-12-02.........100
Jose..................Stereo..........2013-12-01.........50
Jose..................Stereo..........2013-12-04.........100
Jose..................Camera..........2013-12-02.........400
Brad..................TV..............2013-12-03.........100
Brad..................TV..............2013-12-04.........50
Brad..................Stereo..........2013-12-03.........100
Hector................Stereo..........2013-12-04.........50
I want to make a report that looks like
Employee.......Product.......2013-12-01....2013-12-02....2013-12-03....2013-12-04
Brad...........Stereo....................................100
...............TV........................................100............50
Hector.........Stereo...................................................50
Jose...........Camera......................400............................
...............Stereo........50.........................................100
...............TV............150...........100
I wanted to do banded rows.
Let's say
Brad's Stereo line is Blue
Brad's TV line is Green
Hector's Stereo line is blue
Jose's Camera Line is Green
Jose's Stereo Line is Blue
Jose's TV line is Green
The rownumber trick doesn't work because the rows come no particular order
and in the case of Jose's stereo line, the cell under 2013-12-01 and 2013-12-04 would have different values.
I saw a trick using running values and count distinct, but that won't work either.
Anyone have any ideas how to do banded rows in SSRS using a matrix/tablix?

Answer 1

I'm assuming you are starting with a matrix that looks like the image below: two row groups and one column group.
Right click on the row group for Product and choose Add Group -> Child Group. In the Group By box enter "1".
Rename the group to RowColorGroup. Rename the textbox (in the details row to the right of textbox contining the product field) to RowColorGroupTextBox.
Select the value for RowColorGroupTextBox by entering the following as the Value expression: =iif(RunningValue(Fields!Employee.Value & Fields!Product.Value,CountDistinct,Nothing) Mod 2, "LightSteelBlue", "White") (You can change the colors to whatever you want.)
In the textbox properties for RowColorGroupTextBox change the fill color expression to =Value
Remove any text in the header field above RowColorGroupTextBox.
Remove the right border on the textboxes in the column containing RowColorGroupTextBox.
Remove the left border on the textboxes containing the date field and the amount field.
Set the width of the RowColorGroupTextBox to 0 and the CanGrow property to false.
Select the textbox containing the amount fill and set the fill color expression to =ReportItems!RowColorGroupTextbox.Value
This results in a report where the details rows alternate in colors.
Here's a blog post I found that uses the same method.