Chapter 14. Report Navigation

In This Chapter

• Hyperlink (Jump to URL) Navigation

• BookmarkLink (Jump to Bookmark) Navigation

• Document Map

• Drillthrough (Jump to Report) Navigation

• Hiding Items and Toggle Items

• Practical Application of Action Items

One of the main uses for navigation functionality is to simplify navigation of large reports and hierarchies of reports . Report developers can add hyperlink actions (or simply actions) to a report.

Reporting Services supports three types of actions:

• Drillthrough ( Jump to report ) Jump to other reports. This action also provides an opportunity to provide parameters for the target report as well as the ability to jump to the same report with different parameters. This action is denoted with the <Drillthrough > element in a report's RDL.

• BookmarkLink ( Jump to bookmark ) Jump to other areas (bookmarked) within the report. This action is denoted with the <BookmarkLink > element in a report's RDL.

• Hyperlink ( Jump to URL ) Jump to web pages and other HREF constructs, such as mail and news. This action is denoted with the <Hyperlink > element in a report's RDL.

Expressions can be used as a value for any action. Developers can add an action from either the Properties dialog box (right-click on a report item, select Properties from the shortcut menu, and click the Navigation tab) or from the Action property (click the ellipses in the Action property of the control). See Figure 14.1 for more details.

Figure 14.1. Two methods of adding actions to a report.

Actions can be added to a Textbox or an Image item, which, in turn , provides actionable items for List, Table, and Matrix. Any Reporting Services item can have a single action and either one or both of the Bookmark and Document Map labels associated with it. Multiple actions can point to a single bookmark link. This is similar to a reference to a particular topic in a book, in that multiple pages can point to a single topic.

Tip

Highlight an actionable item so it is intuitive to a user that the item can be clicked. Blue in color and underlined text items, usually, provide good highlights.