CHAPTER 5 IMPLEMENTING DASHBOARD STYLE REPORT OBJECTS
same or was it less. If we see a consistent trend of negative results, decision makers may want to dig
deeper into the possible causes. This is the style of the report that we are going to create in this example.
Our decision makers want to see the current state of total visits in relation to the prior month.
In this example, we will start off with Indicator Start.rdl in our Pro_SSRS solution. Included in the
Indicator Start report is a dataset that returns four years of sample visit data. You will also notice that
there is a tablix with three columns. Two of these already have some of the data needed on the report
and a third will be used for our Indicator report item. We have shown you some of the ways to add items
to your report design surface, but as with many applications, one can often complete the same task
several different ways.
Right click on the empty textbox in Tablix1, select Insert at the bottom of the sub-context menu, and
choose Indicator. When you add an Indicator report item to a report, you are prompted with the
Indicator Wizard as shown in Figure 5-24. There are four categories of indicators which you can choose.
However, each of these indicators can be customized down to the color and the values used to control
them. You can even add more indicator states, use your very own custom images, or embed images
within the Gauge control.Figure 5-24. Indicator: Indicator type selection