ActiveReportsJS 2021 Roadmap

Since the ActiveReportsJS v2.0 release, we've received a lot of feedback. Overall, it's been positive, but we also realized that there are missing features that we need to implement to meet various requirements suggested during our conversations with customers. In 2021, we plan to introduce new features that will simplify the product usage for report authors, developers, and end-users of the ActiveReportsJS components.

We plan to roll out two maintenance releases for v2.0 and the major release, v3.0. The detailed roadmap follows.

Maintenance Release v2.1

Tentative beta release date: April 15, 2021

Tentative public release date: May 6, 2021

New features

• Basic RichText Support - A modern reporting tool needs to support the mixed-format text. The first version of this feature allows report authors to supply reports with data-bound HTML fragments, supporting the most common tag and styles.
• Angular, React, and Vue Wrappers for the Report Designer Component - It's entirely possible to use the Report Designer Component with any front-end framework. However, ActiveReportsJS v2.0 does not include the Angular, React, and Vue wrappers for the report designer. In v2.1, these wrappers become available and streamline the development experience.
• Page Break = Between Option - The report designer currently allows setting Page Break to Start, End, and StartAndEnd values for grouping in the table, list, and banded list data regions. Sometimes an extra blank page generates at the end of the report when these options are in use. The new "Between" option solves this problem.
• New Filter UI - The Report Designer Component and the Standalone Designer Application have an improved user interface for setting data filters. Here is a glimpse at the new UI:

• Updated Tablix Wizard in the report designer includes new options that help build advanced summary reports easier than ever before.

• Brand New Expressions Syntax - We simplified the expression syntax so that a report author could use the string interpolation. This is a significant improvement of UX compared to the current version. Here is how a report design looks like in v2.1:

• Radar Chart Support - This type of Chart Report Item allows report authors to create advanced visualization of complex data.
• Dynamic Chart Settings - With the support of dynamic chart rules comes a more powerful chart appearance configuration. For instance, it is possible to set dynamically evaluated rules for the chart column colors.
• Updated Public API allows developers to build reports programmatically using strongly typed TypeScript code.

Updated Documentation

ActiveReportsJS v2.1 has the completely revised Report Author Guide explaining every aspect of report creation, including new tutorials and live demos.

Crucial Bug Fixes

The report designer component in ActiveReportsJS v2.0 may conflict with a hosting application's style. Currently, we provide a workaround to fix this issue. ActiveReportsJS v2.1 brings the actual fix.

Maintenance Release v2.2

Tentative beta release date: August 1, 2021

Tentative public release date: August 15, 2021

New Features

• Enhanced RichText support allows editing RichText at design time, importing HTML and Markdown files, and preserving the FormattedText report item during conversion from ActiveReports.NET to ActiveReportsJS.
• Frozen Rows and Columns option for the Table and Tablix data regions simplifies the experience of reading summary reports that span over multiple screens horizontally or vertically.
• Dynamic page visibility makes Fixed Report Layouts more flexible than ever before.
• Data Viewer in the data set editor enables the instant preview of bound data.
• Keyboard Shortcuts for the Report Viewer Component improve the user experience of navigating through a report.
• Automated UI localization makes it possible to translate the User Interface of the report viewer and designer components and define the default properties of report items, such as font family.
• ES Module distribution of Core, Exports, and Report Viewer modules allows developers to use ActiveReportsJS together with bleeding-edge tools such as Snowpack and Vite.

Updated Documentation

In ActiveReportsJS v2.2 will plan to improve the documentation of ActiveReportJS TypeScript declarations by providing more detailed explanations and usage samples for the public API.

Major Release v3.0

Tentative beta release date: December 1, 2021

Tentative public release date: December 15, 2021

The main topic of the new major release is Data Binding and Performance improvements.

• Data Set relationships allow joining related data sets at design time to build data models for advanced data visualizations.
• Large Data Sets support - Currently, ActiveReportsJS does not work very well with large volumes of data(more than 100000 records). When an application sends to preview a report that is bound to a large data set, it could lock the browser UI, and the rendering process could be slow. We plan to eliminate the UI lock and improve rendering performance to a reasonable extent.
• PDF Export performance is slow compared to ActiveReports.NET. In v3.0, we plan to improve the performance of ActiveReportsJS PDF Export to a reasonable extent.