Master Reports

Introduction

Master Reports is a powerful templating feature that allows you to create consistent and reusable templates for your reporting needs. This feature streamlines the report creation process by enabling the definition of a standard layout and design that can be reused across multiple reports, ensuring consistency and reducing the effort required to create new reports from scratch.

What is a Master Report?

A Master Report acts as a blueprint for other reports, known as Content Reports. It contains predefined elements that remain consistent across all reports derived from it. These elements include:

Master Items: These are fixed elements in the report template, such as headers, footers, logos, or any other content that should remain unchanged across multiple reports. Report Authors cannot modify master items in the derived Content Reports, ensuring that essential design components and branding elements are consistently applied.
Content Placeholders: These are designated areas within the Master Report where report authos can insert or modify content in the derived Content Reports. Content Placeholders provide flexibility while maintaining the overall structure defined by the Master Report.

When a report author creates a Content Report based on a Master Report, they are essentially populating the Content Placeholders with specific data or elements relevant to that report, while the Master Items remain intact. This approach simplifies the report creation process, especially in scenarios where a consistent layout is required across multiple reports.

Typical Use Cases for Master Reports

Corporate Branding and Consistency: For organizations that require all reports to adhere to strict branding guidelines, Master Reports ensure that key branding elements such as logos, colors, and footers are consistently applied across all reports.
Departmental Reporting: Different departments within an organization may require reports that share a common structure but contain department-specific data. By using a Master Report, each department can generate its own reports without worrying about maintaining the overall design.
Client-Specific Reports: Service providers who generate reports for multiple clients can use Master Reports to ensure that all client reports maintain a uniform structure while allowing for client-specific content to be easily inserted.
Regular Updates and Maintenance: When an organization needs to update a common element across all reports—such as a company address or a legal disclaimer—Master Reports allow this change to be made once in the Master Report, with all derived Content Reports automatically reflecting the update.
Standardized Documentation: For creating standardized forms, invoices, or other documents where the layout remains constant but the content varies, Master Reports can significantly reduce the time and effort involved in document creation.

Creating Master Reports

To create a Master Report, start the Standalone Designer Application, open the File-New menu, and select the report type for a Master Report. Then, open the Report tab in the application bar and invoke the Convert to Master Report command:

Now you can design the Master Report with all standard report items. Additionally, you can add the Content Placeholder item, which is located at the bottom of the toolbox:

Once you've finished designing the Master Report, save it to your disk. Note that the file extension for Master Reports is rdlx-json-master.

Creating Content Reports

To create a new Content Report, start the Standalone Designer Application, open the File-New menu, and select the report type for a Content Report. Then, invoke the File/Set Master Report menu item and then select the master report in the Open File Dialog. The content report will be created, and you can add items into the areas that were allocated by using the content placeholders.

In the screenshot below, you can see the content report that was created from a master report containing two content placeholders: one in the page header, and another one above the table. You can add new items in the placeholders, but you can't modify any of the locked content (the header, logo, and the table)

Managing Master Reports in Applications

When you save a content report in the Standalone Report Designer, the path to the associated master report is stored in the content report’s properties as a relative path. For instance, if you save the content report in the same folder as the master report, the path will only include the master report’s file name.

If the content report is saved in a parent folder of the master report, the path will include the relative location. For example, if the content report is in a parent folder and the master report is in a subfolder named MasterReports, the path will be MasterReports/master_report.rdlx-json-master.

The ActiveReportsJS Designer and Viewer handle master reports similarly to other resources, like images or drill-through reports. Therefore, it’s crucial to maintain the directory structure of both master and content reports. This ensures that the relative path is correctly resolved in your application and that all resources are properly linked.

Check the following pages to learn how to manage master reports in your application for advanced scenarios: