Actions and Drill Down Reports

In This Topic

Actions can be associated with all essential chart and gauge elements, including: chart data points, chart walls, chart axes, gauge pointers, gauge ranges, gauge axes, titles etc.

Since actions are implemented as items in the report item image map, actions can be globally disabled if you set the Rendering - Render Image Map property to false.

The action defines what should happen when the users clicks on a particular element at runtime. Actions are primary used when you want to create drill down reports. In general there are four types of actions:

None - nothing happens when the user clicks a data point (the default).
Jump To Report - the report viewer shows another report (specified by the report name property) with the specified list of parameter {name : value} pairs. Use this option to make drill-down reports (see below).
Jump To Bookmark - choose this option to define a link to a bookmark within the current report. Type or select the bookmark ID for the report to jump to when the user clicks the link. Click the expression (fx) button to edit the expression. The bookmark ID can be either a static ID or an expression that evaluates to a bookmark ID. The expression can include a field that contains a bookmark ID.
Jump to URL - choose this option to define a link to a Web page. Type or select the URL of a Web page or an expression that evaluates to the URL of a Web page. Click the expression (fx) button to edit the expression. This expression can include a field that contains a URL.

Drill-Down Reports in SSRS

The term Drill-Down Reporting is a synonym of Master-Detail Reporting. In this reporting technique a set of sub-reports is associated with a master report. When the user clicks certain areas of the master report display elements, the master report setups a set of parameters for a specific sub-report and redirects the report user to that sub-report. This reporting technique is useful when the master report cannot provide a clear visual perception of all the details that the user wants to see, so that is why it redirects the user to a more concrete report, that the master report setups dynamically for the user, based on where he/she clicked.

In SSRS, Master-Detail Reports are driven by parameters. Because parameters can be consumed by any expression, the master report can actually control almost anything in the sub-report - from the data aggregation to the data visualization.

Master-Detail reports are visually implemented when you select to the Jump to Report action type, for a chart/gauge element of your choice. As already mentioned all essential chart and gauge elements have an associated action. When the action type is set to Jump to Report, you are allowed to specify the following properties of the jump:

Report - specifies the target report. If the target report is in the same folder as the current report, use the name of the report only. If the report is in a different folder on the same report server, use a relative path to the report (for example, ../Folder2/Report1). If the report is on a different report server, use the full path to the report server and report (for example, http://server1/Folder3/Report2).

Parameters - a list of {parameter name;value} pairs that need to be passed to the sub report. The parameter names must match the parameters defined for the target report.