Reporting — Enhancements, Documentation Updates, Tips & Tricks (April-May 2021)

This post includes important product/documentation updates along with a list of interesting support tickets answered throughout April and May. We hope you find this content of value. As always, should you have any questions, feel free to comment below.

A Few Recent Enhancements

Web Report Designer - Parameter Editing

We added an Edit icon next to the Parameters node in the Field List. As a result, you no longer have to expand the parameters node and are able to edit multiple parameters simultaneously within the Parameters dialog.

Web Report Designer - Drop-Down Editor Item Tooltips

We enhanced our drop-down editors to reflect their values within item tooltips.

WinForms and Web Report Designer - Culture Codes

The Localization Editor within the DevExpress Report Designer (for WinForms and for Web) now displays culture code near the language name.

Web Report Designer - Text Alignment Editor

The Text Alignment property includes a new customization UI.

Web Document Viewer - Editable Fields

The EditablePreviewEnabled static property - available since v19.2 – allows you to highlight editable fields in a report. The behavior of this feature has been modified for versions 20.1 and higher: when it is disabled, users cannot change a report’s editable fields, and the Highlight Editing Fields button is unavailable.

• EditablePreviewEnabled = true

  

• EditablePreviewEnabled = false

  

Web Document Viewer and Report Designer - The ParametersInitialized Event

The new ParametersInitialized event now occurs when report parameters are specified. This allows you to modify client-side parameter values after initialization and before they are used in the report.

This new event is available in both the standalone DevExpress Web Document Viewer and in the Web Report Designer’s built-in Preview.

Web Chart Designer - Drag and Drop Series

You can now drag series in the Chart Designer dialog to change their order.

Documentation Updates

• The Reporting Documentation section now covers all features available with v21.1.
• Fluent API for Transformation-based federated queries.
  The Bind a Report to a Transformation-Based Data Source documentation topic now includes up-to-date information and code samples.
• A new section in the Print and Export Reports in ASP.NET Web Forms Applications topic describes how to print and export reports within the same browser tab.
• New barcode types - Deutsche Post Identcode and Leitcode
• A new Multi-Tenancy Support topic describes how to allow users to store sensitive data in a shared database.
• We’ve documented the Report Design Analyzer for WinForms, WPF, and Visual Studio.
• The Create a Report Parameter topic now contains a new Use Parameters to Filter Data section.

Interesting Support Tickets

Reporting for Web

• How to manage JSON connections in the Web Report Designer (T994274)
• How to apply different fonts to the integer and fractional parts of a number in XRRichText (T997923)
• How to bind an XtraReport parameter’s data source using client side event handler (T995465)
• How to set the Document Viewer’s height (T990505)
• How to set a default value for a lookup parameter in the Web Document Viewer (T988277)

Reporting for WinForms

• How to customize the ChooseEFConnectionStringPage of Entity Framework data source wizard (T1000219)
• How to customize the field list in the XtraReports expression editor (T993767)
• How to get the active control in the WinForms Report Designer (T990599)

Reporting for WPF

• How to hide the header panel in the WPF Report Designer (T988910)

Reporting - Multiple Supported Platforms (WinForms, WPF, ASP.NET, .NET Core)

• How to apply localization to data-bound controls in the Report Header band (T995376)
• How to embed a PDF with a page header (T1000380)
• How to map custom multi-value query parameters to report parameters (T999385)
• How to navigate bookmarks in a report and show additional information (T997281)
• How to make the Web Report Designer support multiple languages (T994343)
• XRTable RowSpan does not draw borders when a cell is split between the pages (T955168)

Should you have any technical questions related to this blog post, please submit a support ticket via the DevExpress Support Center.