CHAPTER 6 BUILDING REPORTS- Document mapping: Provides a navigation pane within the report with values
based on a field or grouping. - Visibility: Adds interactivity to a report by hiding and showing report items based
on user input. - Interactive sorting: Allows users to interactively select how the report data will be
sorted. - Hyperlink actions: Allows the user to click a report item that is linked to a location
within the same report or external to the report.
The different rendering formats provided with SSRS, which are covered in detail in Chapter 7,
accommodate viewing and printing reports to meet the needs of different types of workers. However,
this produces a limitation in that some of the functionality of one rendering format is not available in
other formats. This is most evident when working with interactivity, as you will see in the “Interactive
Sorting” section.
Document Mapping
Creating a document map in an SSRS report will present users with an integrated navigation pane when
the report is rendered. The user can select an item in the navigation pane, which will cause the report to
jump to the position where that item is located. In the example report, for instance, a user might be
interested in viewing information about Alzheimer’s patients. You can create a document map for the
Diagnosis group in the report so that when the user selects Alzheimer’s from the navigation pane, the
report will automatically skip to that section; in other words, the user will not have to manually search
through the report to find the desired information. You can also add document maps at multiple levels,
creating a hierarchical selection in the navigation pane. Keeping with the example, you can add a
document map to the Service_Type group in addition to the Diagnosis group; the user can then expand
Alzheimer’s in the navigation pane to see all the types of services—home health aides, for example—that
have been performed for each diagnosis.
You create document maps by adding an expression to the Document Map Label property available
for individual report items or for groups. Begin this example by opening the
EmployeeServiceCost_DocumentMap_Start.rdl report in the Pro_SSRS project. By following these steps,
you will add a document map label to the Service_Type and Diagnosis groups:
- On the Design tab, right click the Service_Type group in the Row Groups pane
and select Group Properties. Next click on the Advanced tab. - In the Advanced tab of the Group Properties, select Service_Type in the
Document map dropdown. - Complete steps 1 and 2 for the Diagnosis group, which is the first-level
grouping above Service_Type. Select Diagnosis for the Document Map Label
option.
Now when you preview the report, the navigation pane will automatically be displayed on the left
side of the report. The preview, which is in HTML by default, displays in one of the rendering formats
that supports document mapping, such as PDF (see Figure 6-10).