CHAPTER 5 IMPLEMENTING DASHBOARD STYLE REPORT OBJECTSWe are going to use the default Directional indicator, the one with three arrows. Be sure that
indicator is selected. Then click OK to return to the report designer. At this point, we have added an
indicator, but we have yet to tell it what field to use. Right click on the indicator, select Indicator
Properties and choose the Values and States tab. This is the screen where most of the magic happens. Set
the Value to be =SUM(Fields!Diff.Value), as you want to display the difference between the current
month and prior month as shown in Figure 5-25. Next, switch the States Measurement Unit to Numeric
from Percentage. If your results were coming back as a percentage of change value, then you would leave
this at its default setting. If you wanted to add or reduce the number of indicator states, you could do
that by clicking the Add or Delete buttons, respectively. Three values will suit our needs in this example,
so make the following changes to the start and end values:
- Red Down Arrow – Clear the start value and set -1 as the end. This essentially is
telling SSRS that anything negative should be represented by the red down arrow. - Yellow Right Arrow – Set the start and the end values to 0 to represent no change
in the current and prior total visit counts. - Green Up Arrow – Enter a 1 in the start value and clear out the end value to show
all positive values as an increase in visits over prior month.
Figure 5-25. Indicator properties