By: Siddharth Mehta
Overview
SQL Server Mobile Report Publisher is a mobile report authoring tool that provides an interface and visualizations to develop mobile reports. It also provides options to consume data from Microsoft Excel spreadsheets or Shared Datasets deployed on a SSRS web portal. This means that the mobile report publisher indirectly supports all the data sources that SSRS supports. In this chapter we will introduce the interface and visualizations available in Mobile Report Publisher.
Explanation
The below diagram shows the authoring interface of Mobile Report Publisher. We will explore the different options.
1) The toolbar on the top consists of five options:
- Create a new mobile report
- Open a mobile report
- Save
- Save as - mobile report
- SSRS server connections respectively.
2) The menu bar contains four tabs - Layout, Data, Settings and Preview.
- Layout - This tab provides an adjustable grid divided into rows and columns. This grid divides the targeted device screen virtually in percentages which allows for convenient size and position controls without getting into pixel by pixel calculation of each control.
- Data - This tab provides options to select data either from an Excel spreadsheet or from a shared dataset deployed on a SSRS web portal.
- Settings - This tab provides options to set Report level properties like Report Title, Currency, Client Data Caching, etc.
- Preview - This tab actually executes the report and shows the report output in a simulator. This feature is used to actually test the report.
3) The two options on the top right corner are for design layout and to apply themes. In Mobile Report Publisher, three types of layouts are available - Master layout, Tablet layout and Mobile layout. All controls need to be placed on the Master layout and configured. These controls will then become available for use on the Mobile and Tablet layouts.
Visualizations
The below diagram shows the list of visualizations available in Mobile Report Publisher for developing mobile reports. These visualizations are categorized by Charts, Grids, Gauges, Maps and Navigators. Dragging and dropping each visualization onto the grid layout will show the visual on the chart using the sample data that ships with each visualization control.
Now that we have explored the authoring interface, we will focus on different categories of visualizations and the corresponding purpose in the next section.
Additional Information
- Consider exploring the mobile report publisher authoring interface and try out all the features discussed above.
