Best Help Desk Reporting
We looked at length for the Best Help Desk Reporting tool we could find, and after extensive searching, integrated Telerik Reports tools into Cynergy Help Desk Software. In the beginning, we used Crystal Report Writer, but converted to Telerik after Crystal Reports were acquired a couple of years ago.
The Easiest Way to Create and Style .Net Reports for your Help Desk or Customer Support Software.
Telerik Reporting is a lightweight .NET reporting solution. It supports all .Net desktop and web platforms, which means that developers can easily embed interactive reports in Silverlight, WPF, ASP.NET and Windows Forms applications. The tool also supports data exports to all popular file formats such as PDF, Excel, RTF, TIFF, etc. Enjoy unique styling capabilities, a very intuitive report designer, and a powerful API, which will allow you to create interactive reports with ease in Visual Studio. The software also lets you reuse existing XtraReports, Crystal Reports and Active Reports*. Unlike other products, Telerik Reporting offers seamless run-time royalty free deployment.
Creating Reports
Telerik Reporting pioneered the concept of codeless report creation, which we refer to as Easibility. The exceptional and ingenious Visual Studio Report Designer offers countless helper wizards, tools, and error indicators to guide you in the report creation process. Once you try it you will find that writing code should not be associated with powerful report generation. This is because creating reports should be quick and easy; after all you need to take control over your data, not your reporting tool. Still, if you prefer to code your reports, the powerful Telerik Reporting API will help you do just that.
Telerik Reporting is perfect for creating professional and comprehensive reports for an array of business needs in a fast and efficient manner. By using data bound items like Charts, Crosstabs and SubReports you can create interactive reports and achieve many reporting scenarios (dashboards, sales reports and invoices, inventory reports and more), which will help business users grasp the data at once. Excel-like conditional formatting and custom symbols/shapes can be used to add performance indicators to your reports for in-depth visual presentation of your data.
• Innovative Report Designer
• Effective Report Wizard for Quick Report Creation
• Convert and Reuse Legacy Reports
• Add Charts, Crosstabs, and more with Drag and Drop
• Styling and Formatting Reports
• Group Explorer for Easy Navigation and Editing
• Report Explorer for Quick Access to Report Elements
• Data Explorer for Drag and Drop Data Binding
• Deploying Reports is a Breeze
• Using Telerik Reporting in SharePoint 2010 and Windows Azure
Innovative Report Designer
Telerik Reporting is the first reporting tool in the industry to extend the design surface in Visual Studio .NET to offer WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) report generation. You can add/remove report items and groups, bind items via the supplied wizards, style any report to your preference, and even preview the report through the provided Preview modes for Web and Windows Forms. Item rotation, in-line editing, report zooming, drag-and-drop data binding, and a slew of additional features are also available directly in the report designer.
The surface of the report designer simulates graph paper and represents the actual layout of the report elements as they would appear on a printed sheet of paper. There are no bulky section dividers or other elements that clog the designer; all page and report elements (such as headers, footers and detail sections) can be added or removed via the context menu.
To make the process of accurate positioning, aligning, and sizing of report elements easy and intuitive, Telerik Reporting implements some techniques used in drawing software, such as gridlines, item snapping for perfect positioning, item dimensions, and report panning. The VS Report Designer is available for Visual Studio .NET 2005, 2008, and 2010.
Effective Report Wizard for Quick Report Creation
Creating new reports should not be an adventure. Telerik Reporting provides an easy to use Report Wizard which helps you create your report in a flash. Simply start it, select your data source, and choose one of the predefined layouts and professionally styled themes. It is that simple and no coding is required.
In addition to creating reports, the Report Wizard also provides a handy way to configure label settings in case you decide to create a Label Report. You can select from a number of standard label formats or create custom ones if needed; the generated report will be customized according to the selected label specifications.
Convert and Reuse Legacy Reports
If you already have a reporting tool in place, you probably already have some reports in use. Chances are that with Telerik Reporting there is no need to recreate these reports, because they can be reused with the help of the automatic Report Converter Wizard, which supports converting Crystal Reports *, XtraReports *, and Active Reports * to Telerik Reports in minutes.
In addition, the built-in Project Upgrade Wizard will help you migrate your existing Telerik Reporting projects to newer or older Telerik versions in an instant, taking care of all compatibility issues on the fly. It will even create a backup of your existing project, if needed. The upgrades are effortless and trouble-free.
* Crystal Reports is a trademark of SAP; Active Reports is a trademark of Data Dynamics; XtraReports is a trademark of Developer Express Inc.
Add Charts, Crosstabs, and more with Drag and Drop
All Telerik Reporting items, such as charts, tables, data source components, and numerous wizards are available in the Visual Studio toolbox for easy drag-and-drop usage. Upon dropping on the VS designer surface, many of the report items will invoke custom-built design time wizards which will help you set up the report items in a fast and efficient manner.
Styling and Formatting Reports
The Visual Studio Report Designer from Telerik comes with handy tools and wizards which will assist you in styling your reports the way you need them to. From rich CSS-like reusable styles, through basic HTML text formatting, and friendly conditional formatting, Telerik Reporting is sure to meet your styling and formatting demands.
Group Explorer for Easy Navigation and Editing
The Group Explorer visualizes each report’s and table’s group hierarchy allowing for easy navigation and maintenance. Being a ToolWindow, it can be moved, sized or docked in the same manner as other IDE windows.
In the case of reports, it allows you to see the report structure and its groups, and to change their Grouping, Sorting and Filtering properties with a few mouse clicks. The Group Explorer can be especially handy for complex reports with lots of groups, where it is difficult to select a group and distinguish the group hierarchy.
When a table/crosstab item is selected, the Group Explorer dialog shows the Row/Column Groups and again, allows for easily changing their Grouping, Sorting and Filtering properties.
Report Explorer for Quick Access to Report Elements
In addition to the regular design-time characteristics, Telerik Reporting integrates an additional tool for better report management in Visual Studio. The Report Explorer displays a tree representation of the report structure with all present items, parameters and global styles that are being used in the report. Using the Explorer, you can quickly access any element in your report, a simple or a complex one, and create and edit styles and parameters, which makes the report management process much easier.
Data Explorer for Drag and Drop Data Binding
The Data Explorer tool window shows the relevant database fields that are available in your report and the calculated fields you have created. You can use it to drag and drop a data source field onto your report for codeless, intuitive and easy report creation.
Deploying Telerik Reports is a Breeze
Distributing an application that uses Telerik Reporting is a breeze – you simply need the Telerik Reporting assemblies referenced in your application. Being an embedded reporting engine (class library), Telerik Reporting uses a few assemblies for its reporting and processing engines, and for the viewers. This way reports can be delivered directly to your business application, be it a desktop application (WPF, Windows Forms) or web-based (Silverlight, ASP.NET), and they can be viewed directly in a report viewer, where we guarantee the same look of the reports, regardless of the platform. Being an embedded reporting engine, your reports can also be embedded directly on the forms/pages of your application for direct viewing, without the need of a report viewer.
Data Presentation and Analysis
Comprehensive Reports (dashboards)
Telerik Reporting is perfect for creating professional and comprehensive reports for an array of business needs. By using data bound items like Charts (link), Crosstabs (link) and SubReports you can achieve scenarios where data needs to be presented in a custom and complex logical layout. The data shown can be filtered, grouped, formatted conditionally to show trends, and styled to fit your needs.
Tabular Data Representation
Cross tabs and tables give you the ability to display data in a matrix format, used to present and analyze the relationship between two or more variables simultaneously. Cross tabulation is a vital part of any business intelligence (BI) solution, because it provides the end user with a tabular data format which is easy to understand, and more importantly – to analyze. The Telerik Reporting Cross Tabs offer the same intuitive interface within Visual Studio developers have become to expect from Telerik.
The Table item is a generalized layout report item that displays report data in cells that are organized into rows and columns. Report data can be any detail data as it is retrieved from the data source, or aggregated detail data organized into groups that are specified by the user.
The Table, Crosstab, and List report items are variations of the same data presentation, optimized for the specific data layout. By default, the Table and the Crosstab items display group data in a grid layout, while the List displays detail data in a free-form layout.
All tabular representation items offer design-time support in Visual Studio thus giving developers an extra level of detail in their report design.
Graphical Data Representation – Charts
By using RadChart, Telerik Reporting is capable of displaying data in a visually compelling way and helps the user/decision maker understand and analyze data in a more efficient manner. The chart can bind to live data and display 17 popular chart types, such as Bar, Pie, Gantt, Line, Area, Bubble, and more.
Barcodes
Thanks to the specialized Barcode Report Item you can create barcodes, and add them to your reports. The barcodes can be very practical for commercial purposes of small or medium sized businesses, where you can use them for the products you sell.
Labels
Similar to Microsoft Word, with Telerik Reporting you can create labels in the form of predefined page settings that represent standard paper formats. Designing labels is made easy by the built-in Report Wizard. Labels are very handy for mailing, pricing, or other commercial purposes.
Styling and Formatting Reports
Extended Text Formatting through HTML
Telerik Reporting supports inserting HTML-formatted content directly into the report via the HtmlTextBox item to produce customizable and good looking results. The HTML value can be specified at design time (either through a WYSIWYG or an expression editor). It can also retrieve content directly from a data source by using any expression that evaluates to correctly formatted HTML. Various formatting options that are available to control the text presentation are:
- Font, size, color
- Bold, Italic, Underline
- Lists
- Paragraphs
- Inline styles (background, border, color, font, padding)
Formatted text can be rendered to HTML, PDF, and Image formats, in Silverlight, WPF, WinForms and ASP.NET applications. The HtmlTextBox item also supports injecting complex expressions into the HTML-formatted text for mail merge functionality.
Fine-Grained CSS-like Styling
Telerik Reporting introduces an advanced and much enriched styling mechanism through its built-in styling model, which closely follows CSS specifications. This model provides for quicker and very fine-grained visual customization of all reporting controls, all in the Visual Studio designer. This CSS-like mechanism offers full control over the item’s background, images, colors, borders, styles, paddings, etc.
You can assign styles to one or more reporting items by using the known CSS selectors: Type, Attribute, Style, and Descendant. Styles can also be applied globally and then saved to an external file for later use. If extra control over visual appearance is needed, cascading styles can be applied manually.
External style sheets can be referenced from local path, relative path, resource, and/or URL for extra flexibility when using style sheets.
Conditional Formatting
Formatting your reports, based on pre-defined conditions is made extremely simple through the Microsoft Excel©-like functionality directly in the Visual Studio design-time. It offers codeless generation of rules and uses the efficient styling mechanism of Telerik Reporting to tweak the colors, fonts, and background presentation of your data.
Report Globalization
Due to business globalization, the need of multi-lingual and culturally aware applications is a requirement. Telerik Reporting is culturally aware and you can use more than one culture for your reports at the same time. The cultures can be applied to the whole report or to specific items.
Culture determines the way date, time, numbers and currencies are displayed, and specifies the appropriate text direction (LTR or RTL). This means that Telerik Reporting can be used with any RTL language, such as Hebrew and Arabic. Globalization is fully supported in all export formats (HTML, TIFF, PDF, Excel).
In addition, all Telerik reports are localizable. Localization is controlled through the Localizable property of the report, much like the standard .NET controls.
Rich Set of Measurement Units
A typical challenge in report design is the precise layout and sizing of elements for the purposes of proper printing and viewing in different formats. Telerik Reporting supports a variety of measurement units, which can be used for any element, including borders, padding, and even font sizes. Examples:
Font.Size=1cm
BorderWidth.Left=2in
You can also use combinations of different measurement units where appropriate. A default report measurement unit allows you to quickly enter dimensions and positions without specifying the unit.
Reuse of Corporate Design and Branding
Telerik Reporting introduces an advanced and rich styling mechanism through its built-in styling model, which closely follows CSS specifications. This CSS-like mechanism offers full control over the item’s background, images, colors, borders, styles, paddings, etc. Once created, just save your corporate design as a new theme and reuse it each time a new report is needed.
Dynamic Layout
Telerik Reporting offers a brilliant way to providing dynamic layouts by docking and anchoring report items:
- Docking a report item causes its edges to adhere to the edges of its container. When a report item is docked to the edge of its container, it is always positioned to flush against that edge when the container is resized.
- Anchoring is used to dynamically resize report items with their container. It keeps the distance between the edge of the report item and the corresponding edge of the container in which it is anchored.
Format Builder
Following established usability standards, Telerik Reporting features a Format Builder which will assist you in formatting numbers and dates in Microsoft Excel© fashion. From decimals to currency, from dates and times to custom formats, the Format Builder supports them all.
End-User Capabilities
Telerik Reporting offers advanced end-user capabilities that provide self-service data exploration in a visual and understandable way. Users will appreciate the interactive content drilling down and drill though, the easy to use report parameters, the printing and exporting capabilities which are available in web based and windows forms applications. These features can easily be added to any report and do not sacrifice the report performance.
- Interactive Reports
- Report Parameters
- Exporting and Saving Reports
- Printing Support
- Document Map
Interactive Reports
Interactive reports give freedom to end-users to explore data in a visual and interactive way in order to gain insight on how aggregates were arrived at, what each high-level number means, and view the raw data pertaining to a high level concept. The interactivity features are available in all Telerik Report Viewers (WPF, Silverlight, WinForms, ASP.NET). This means that developers will be able to deliver a rich report environment to business users without worrying about platform limitations.
- Drill-down and drill-up (expand/collapse) report interactivity allows front-line workers to analyze data directly in the application by either starting from the summary/aggregate information and drilling down to the detailed data which makes up the summary, or drilling up from the facts to the aggregate;
- Drill-through reports – By adding drill trough functionality to your reports you will allow business users to drill through data and get a better understanding of the information presented. A drillthrough report is a report that is opened when a user clicks on a dedicated link in another report.
- Bookmarks – Use bookmarks and bookmark links when you want to provide a customized table of contents or direct users to key locations in a report. You can add a bookmark link to any item that has the Action property.
- Hyperlinks – Add a hyperlink to any report item and allow end-users to access external Web pages by simply clicking on that item in the report. You can add hyperlinks to text, images, and charts or any other item that has the Action property.
Report Parameters
Easy-to-use report parameters are a key highlight of Telerik Reporting because they allow users to modify the report and its data on the fly in order to get a deeper understanding of the data presented. Report parameters can be used to specify the data to be used in a report, connect related reports and subreports, modify presentation, filter/sort/group data, and even change report properties.
Exporting and Saving Reports
Telerik Reporting can save report definitions in XML and export reports in the most commonly used formats, such as Excel, PDF, MHTML, CSV, RTF, and all graphic formats that are supported by GDI+. This feature is appreciated by business analysts because it allows them to handle reports and data outside the application, forward a report to another user, perform additional analysis in Excel, or just archive a report in PDF format.
Printing Support
Printing in Telerik Reporting is built-in, which guarantees the same printing experience in all supported platforms. Telerik Reporting uses its own paging and rendering capabilities to ensure exact positioning of elements when printing. True Printing through the Web Viewers and Silverlight’s native printing capabilities are also supported.
Document Map
The Document Map is a separate pane in the report viewer that displays a list of bookmarked report items in a TOC-like format. It allows the end-users to quickly navigate through a report and/or track their location in it.
Accessing and Managing Data
Data binding and management is a breeze with Telerik Reporting. The tool can consume multiple data sources at the same time, ensuring that organizations can deliver relevant information from almost any data source. Once added to the report, data can easily be manipulated, aggregated, and formatted through easy to use design-time expression editors and format builders. The robust data processing engine ensures that data is delivered to the user in fast and efficient manner.
- Powerful OLAP Data Processing Engine
- Populating Reports with Data
- Expressions, Mail Merge, User Defined Functions
- Data Source Parameters
- Report Parameters
- Bindings
- Grouping, Sorting and Filtering Data
- Aggregates
Powerful OLAP Data Processing Engine
The intelligent Telerik OLAP data engine comes with all the needed backing to give you full control over the data in your reports, and boosts performance by only using the data needed by the report. It effectively balances the new trends of data processing by exploiting database-embedded calculations to get the best out of the available server resources. The processed data is fetched to the middle tier/client for in-memory storage and processing, taking full advantage of the near-instant data access that random access memory provides. The approach is programming language independent and data model neutral, i.e. your data binding expressions can be reused for any kind of data model.
Populating Reports with Data
Telerik Reporting provides handy data source components that can be used to codelessly bind data report items (tables, crosstabs, lists, and charts) to a wide range of data sources including cubes, relational databases, business objects, ORMs such as OpenAccess and Entity Framework, XML, and any ADO.NET data source. The variety of data providers that ADO.NET offers means that the report can be connected to the most used databases, such as SQL Analysis Services, SQL Server, MySQL, Oracle, Microsoft Access, OLE DB, etc. All data source components come with rich design-time support to help you bind your report items in minutes, and without requiring code.
Expressions, Mail Merge, User Defined Functions
Expressions are a very important part when working with data in Telerik Reporting. They are used to specify the data that will be displayed in a report and to manipulate the database fields, making them perfect for filtering, grouping and sorting. Expressions can also be used to conditionally format data, to define master-detail hierarchies, to embed data in a single field, and more. Expressions can also be embedded for merging data-driven information for the purpose of producing mail merge.
You can also create a set of pre-defined expressions (user defined functions) that can be used throughout a report, and which are available at both run-time and design-time. They are usually used to create Calculated Fields where field values are used in formulas, and are very handy for adding frequently used formulas to your reports.
The task of writing expressions is quite simplified by the Expression Builder utility, which provides a list of predefined and dynamic elements that can be used in your expression, such as aggregates, constants, database fields, and functions, making the process of creating expressions simple and effortless. There is no need to write code, nor event handlers.
Data Source Parameters
Data Source Parameters limit the data retrieved from the data source to just the data needed for the report. They can improve performance and decrease the memory footprint of your application, because the filter is applied directly on the database server and only the necessary data is downloaded on the middle tier or client machine.
Report Parameters
By adding Report parameters to you report you will give your users the ability to modify the report data on the fly in order to get a deeper understanding of the data presented. Report parameters are used to specify the data to be used in a report, connect related reports and subreports, modify data presentation, and filter/sort/group data at run time.
Bindings
Bindings allow you to bind report parameters and most items’ properties to an expression by using Binding objects. For example, you can bind the Style.BackgroundColor property of a TextBox item to an expression (=Fields.CarColor) that, when evaluated, returns an object of type appropriate for the property. This functionality is not limited to certain properties only – it is available for almost all report items’ properties.
Grouping, Sorting and Filtering Data
In many cases you will need to break the data into groups in order to make it easier to read and to analyze. For example, a list of products within a common category can be grouped by category. Telerik Reporting supports Grouping Report Data by triggering breaks in the report based on changes in the report data. Multiple levels of grouping can be nested within the report for extra clarity.
Sorting can be performed at both group and report levels. Group Sorting controls the order of grouping data, but not the report detail data. Group level sorting occurs before the sorting for the report as a whole to ensure that data is displayed in the proper order.
Filters are very handy when you need to limit the number of records in a report or group. By using the Edit Filter Dialog (available in Visual Studio) you can filter what records are included in the report. For extended flexibility, Telerik Reporting also supports creating multiple filter rules that can be defined to make up a single filter. In addition, the tool comes with helpful filtering presets such as top N, which considerably simplifies the job of creating filters. See
Aggregates
Telerik Reporting provides built-in aggregate functions which reuse already calculated values in other functions, without the need to recalculate the results again and again. It does this by utilizing accumulating values and running aggregates for data calculations. This functionality is exposed as User Aggregate Functions. You can apply custom logic to these accumulating values, and reuse the results in other functions, rather than computing the values each time for each function.
Report Items
Crosstab Item
Use a CrossTab item to display aggregated data summaries, grouped in rows and columns. The number of rows and columns for groups is determined by the number of unique values for each row and column. You can set up your crosstab report with the help of the Crosstab Wizard item, which helps you bind to the database, set the layout and style the crosstab in a few easy steps.
Table Item
The Table item is a generalized layout report item that displays report data in cells that are organized into rows and columns. Report data can be any detail data as it is retrieved from the data source, or aggregated detail data organized into groups that are specified by the user.
List Item
The List item displays detail data in a free-form layout. You are not limited to a grid layout, but can place fields freely inside the list. You can use a list to design a form for displaying many dataset fields or as a container to display multiple data regions side by side for grouped data. For example, you can define a group for a list; add a table, chart, and image; display values in table and graphic form for each group value.
PictureBox Item
The PictureBox report item is used to display images on a report. It shows images from the data base, from .NET image object, from the file system or from the Web (URL).
Panel Item
The Panel report item is used to group multiple report items together. You can set properties such as Visible on the Panel to affect all of the report items hosted in that Panel.
Chart Item
By using RadChart, Telerik .NET Reporting is capable of displaying data in a visually compelling way and help the user/decision maker understand and analyze data in a more efficient manner. The chart can bind to live data and display 17 popular chart types, such as Bar, Pie, Gantt, Line, Area, Bubble, and more.
SubReport Items
The SubReport report item lets you display one report within another
Barcode Item
The Barcode report item is used for automatic barcode generation directly from a numeric or character data without the need for any barcode font being installed in the end user’s PC. Оver 20 widely used industry barcode standards supported, including: EAN (8, 13, 128), UPC (A, E), MSI, Standard 2 of 5, Code (11, 39, 93, 128).
Shape Item
The Shape report item is used to display one of the predefined shapes on a report.
HtmlTextBox Item
The HtmlTextBox report item allows developers to insert rich text into a report from a subset of HTML tags and CSS attributes. You can specify the HTML value at design time, or retrieve it from a data source using any simple or complex expression that evaluates to correctly formatted HTML.
TextBox Item
The TextBox report item is used to display text on a report.
Checkbox Item
The CheckBox report item is used to display both text and a check mark on a report. The text part of the Checkbox report item supports embedded expressions for mail merge functionality. Embedded expressions give you the freedom to get and insert data-driven information directly into the CheckBox.
Exporting and Printing Reports
Excel
We use a custom Excel Rendering Extension, which produces Excel files without relying on Microsoft Office being installed on the server. The Excel Rendering Extension also preserves the look and feel of the original report and gives you the opportunity to manipulate data further. Exported files can be opened by the user with Microsoft Excel 97 and later.
XPS/XAML
The XML Paper Specification (XPS) provides users and developers with a robust, open and trustworthy format for electronic paper. The XML Paper Specification describes electronic paper in a way that can be read by hardware, software, and people. XPS documents print better, can be shared easier, are more secure and can be archived with confidence.
MHTML (Web Archive)
A web page archive format used to bind resources which are typically represented by external links (such as images, Flash animations, Java applets, audio files) together with HTML code into a single file. The content of an MHTML file is encoded as if it were an HTML e-mail message.
PDF is used for representing two-dimensional documents in a manner independent of the application software, hardware, and operating system. Each PDF file encapsulates a complete description of a fixed-layout 2D document that includes the text, fonts, images, and 2D vector graphics which compose the documents.
Dynamic file naming
When exporting reports, you can dynamically name the exported file based on the built-in expressions. Expressions support parameters, fields, user defined functions, etc. and give you full control over the naming conventions of the exported files.
Rich Text Format (RTF)
Most word processing software implementations support RTF format importing and exporting, and/or direct editing, often making it a “common” format between otherwise incompatible word processing software and operating systems. These factors contribute to its interoperability.
Comma separated values (CSV)
A Comma separated values (CSV) file is used for the digital storage of data structured in a table of lists form, where each associated item (member) in a group is in association with others also separated by the commas of its set. CSV files are often used for moving tabular data between two different computer programs, for example between a database program and a spreadsheet program.
GDI+ formats
All graphic formats that are supported by GDI+ (BMP, GIF, JPEG, PNG, TIFF and metafile (EMF)). Telerik Reporting comes with the ability to export to TIFF using a variety of compression types, providing for an optimized file size, including:
- LZW
- CCITT3
- CCITT4
- RLE
- NONE
Report Book
The Report Book (aka Report Merge) gives you the ability to combine many reports into a single report instance for the purposes of printing them at once or exporting them to a single file. This feature is very handy when you need to print/review related reports at once (i.e. to combine two or more reports into one for easy review/print/export), or when you have to produce a complex statement which contains other reports.
Each report’s page settings are preserved allowing for an easy print/export without any further modifications. Each report in the book is processed as a standalone item and the result is compiled in an aggregate document. There is no additional performance cost outside of the costs for each individual report the report book holds. Reports are displayed in the order they were added to the report book.
Report Viewers and Embedding
With Telerik Reporting you can deliver reports directly to your business application, be it a desktop application (WPF, Windows Forms) or web-based (Silverlight, ASP.NET). The reports can be viewed directly in a report viewer, where we guarantee the same look of the reports, regardless of the platform, or they can be embedded in your application to show the reports directly on the form/page. All viewers use the Telerik Reporting rendering engine, which guarantee that you will always get the same look and feel of your reports, regardless of the environment.
- Silverlight Report Viewer with Out of Browser Support
- ASP.NET Web Forms Viewer
- WPF Report Viewer
- Windows Forms Report Viewer
- Telerik Reporting WCF Service
- Viewer Themes
- Report Embedding
Silverlight Report Viewer with Out of Browser Support
The Silverlight Report Viewer is designed to render Telerik Reports within Silverlight projects. You can configure your Silverlight-based Telerik Reporting applications to run outside the browser thus providing the users with the ability to view reports in standalone Silverlight desktop applications. The viewer leverages Silverlight’s native printing capabilities.
ASP.NET Web Forms Viewer
This Report Viewer is designed to render Telerik Reports within ASP.NET projects. The viewer is also available as preview tab within Visual Studio, saving you the time to build and run your application in order to review your work each time you make changes to the reports. Additionaly with the help of the ASP.NET viewer you can view your reports directly from SharePoint and fully leverage the system’s advantages.
For added swiftness, Telerik Reporting communicates with the web report server by using Ajax calls. This way only data that needs to be displayed is fetched, without burdening the server. This adds desktop-like feeling to the web and users find the application to be more responsive and intuitive. Ajax can be used to hide/show the Web Viewer, to page through reports, or to filter data via report parameters. Both Microsoft’s ASP.NET AJAX and Telerik’s own RadAjax are supported.
WPF Report Viewer
The WPF Report Viewer is designed to render Telerik Reports within WPF projects. The WPF viewer uses the same rendering engine as the other viewers, which guarantees that you will always get the same look and feel of your reports, regardless of the environment.
Windows Forms Report Viewer
The WinForms Report Viewer is designed to render Telerik Reports within Windows Forms projects.The viewer is also available as a preview tab within Visual Studio, saving you the time to build and run your application in order to review your work each time you make changes to the reports.
Telerik Reporting WCF Service
The Telerik Reporting Service is a WCF service that enables the remote access to the Telerik Reporting Engine. The Reporting Service acts as a communication interface between the client programs and the report server.
Viewer Themes
Telerik Reporting ensures that it integrates in your application nicely by supporting themes and skinning for its Silverlight, WPF and ASP.NET viewers. You can choose to use the predefined themes, or create a new one with the help of few images and simple CSS modification (for the ASP.NET Viewer) or Expression Blend (for Silverlight and WPF).
Report Embedding
If the concept of viewers is not needed in your application, and you would like to view the report data directly in your application, you can take full advantage of your reports by embedding them into any .NET project (Silverlight, ASP.NET, WPF, Windows Forms). The embedded reports will have the same look and feel as reports shown within any of the Telerik Report Viewers and will also have the same end-user capabilities, such as interactivity and parameters.
