How to Use a JavaScript Report Designer in Your Web Application

Building a custom report shouldn’t require developers to spend time manually configuring every element from scratch. The ActiveReportsJS Standalone Designer provides a dedicated desktop environment where developers and report authors can quickly create, customize, and preview JavaScript reports using an intuitive drag-and-drop interface.

Built with Electron, the Standalone Designer brings together everything you need to define data sources, configure report layouts, add interactive parameters, and customize report controls—all from one application. Available for Windows, MacOS, and Linux, it provides a streamlined way to build reports before integrating them into your web applications.

In this guide, we’ll explore the key components of the ActiveReportsJS Standalone Designer and show how they work together to simplify the report creation process.

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Key Features of the Designer

The Report Designer has several key features used for building reports:

• The Design Surface
• Data Panel
• Properties Panel
• Control Toolbox

The Design Surface

The Design Surface is the primary workspace for building and organizing your report layout. It provides a visual representation of the report, allowing you to position controls, structure content, and see how individual report elements work together as you design.

Controls such as text boxes, tables, charts, images, and other report elements can be dragged directly from the Control Toolbox onto the Design Surface. Once added, you can move and resize controls to create the desired layout, while alignment guides and other design-time tools help you position elements accurately.

Selecting an element on the Design Surface also connects it with the Properties Panel, where you can configure its appearance, formatting, behavior, and other settings. Report controls can also be bound to fields from your data sets, allowing you to turn the visual layout into a dynamic report populated with application data.

By bringing layout, controls, properties, and data together in one visual workspace, the Design Surface makes it easier to build and refine reports while immediately seeing how changes affect the overall design.

Data Panel

The Data Panel is where report authors connect reports to data and organize the information used throughout the report. Located to the right of the Design Surface, it can be opened by selecting the Data button in the top-right corner of the designer.

From the Data Panel, you can create and configure data sources that connect your report to external data, including REST APIs. You can then define data sets that retrieve the specific fields and records needed for your report. Once configured, data set fields can be dragged directly onto the Design Surface or used to populate controls such as tables, charts, and other data-driven report elements.

The Data Panel also provides access to report parameters, allowing you to make reports more interactive and flexible. Parameters can accept user-provided values and use those selections to control which data is displayed. For example, a sales report could include start and end date parameters that allow users to generate results for a specific reporting period.

By managing data sources, data sets, fields, and parameters from one location, the Data Panel provides a central workspace for defining how your report retrieves and works with application data.

Properties Panel

The Properties Panel gives report authors detailed control over the appearance and behavior of report elements. Located to the right of the Design Surface, it can be opened by selecting the Properties button in the top-right corner of the designer. The available settings automatically update based on the report element or control currently selected.

From the Properties Panel, you can configure everything from basic formatting and dimensions to data bindings, visibility, actions, and other control-specific behavior. For example, selecting a text box lets you adjust properties such as its value, font, alignment, borders, and background, while selecting a chart or other data-driven control provides properties specific to that component.

By default, the Properties Panel opens in Basic Mode, which surfaces commonly used settings and makes routine report configuration easier. For more granular control, you can switch to Advanced Mode to access the complete set of available properties for the selected element.

The built-in search functionality also makes it easier to work with controls that offer many configurable options. Instead of manually navigating property categories, you can search for a specific setting and quickly make the necessary changes.

Together, these features make the Properties Panel the central location for fine-tuning report elements after they have been placed on the Design Surface, giving authors precise control over how reports look and behave.

Control Toolbox

The Control Toolbox provides the building blocks for creating and structuring your report. Located to the left of the Design Surface, the toolbox can be expanded via the menu in the top-left corner of the designer, giving report authors quick access to controls for building report layouts and visualizing data.

To add a control, simply drag it from the toolbox and drop it onto the Design Surface. From there, you can position and resize the control, bind it to report data, and use the Properties Panel to customize its appearance and behavior. This workflow makes it easy to build a report visually while maintaining control over each element's configuration.

The toolbox includes controls for displaying text, images, data, and visualizations, allowing you to create everything from straightforward tabular reports to more complex, interactive layouts. Data-driven controls can be connected to fields and data sets configured through the Data Panel, helping you quickly transform application data into useful report content.

Some controls also include creation wizards that appear when the control is added to the Design Surface. These wizards guide you through common configuration steps, helping you define the initial structure and data settings without having to configure every property manually. You can then use the Properties Panel to further customize the control as your report takes shape.

By combining drag-and-drop report creation with control-specific configuration options, the Control Toolbox gives developers and report authors a flexible starting point for building reports that match their application's reporting requirements.

How to Create a Report with the ActiveReportsJS Designer

To create a report with the ActiveReportsJS Standalone Designer, check out the video above, or review our documentation.

Conclusion

Integrating a JavaScript Report Designer into your web application provides a powerful way to create, edit, and manage reports dynamically. With ActiveReportsJS, you can offer users an intuitive, web-based design experience that supports rich data visualization, customization, and interactive reporting—all without server dependencies. Whether you're building dashboards, financial reports, or operational summaries, ActiveReportsJS empowers developers to deliver a seamless reporting solution tailored to their application’s needs.

Ready to enhance your web application with ActiveReportsJS? Get started today and unlock the full potential of embedded report design.

If you’d like to try ActiveReportsJS, you can download your free trial from here.