Following is a summary of the new features introduced by the 2012.1 release:

• Expressions Everywhere
  Nearly all properties of the Chart and Gauge report items, can now be specified by expressions. Appearance styles (fill, stroke, shadow and text) are also reworked to support both constant specification and specification that is based on expressions. This allows you to bind nearly all configurable aspects of the report items to user defined parameters and/or data. See Property Editors for more info.
  
• Controllable Visibility of Essential Chart and Gauge elements
  Chart Areas, Chart Values, Chart Titles, Gauge Areas and Gauge Titles now have controllable visibility. This new feature in combination with expressions can help you dynamically change the type of data visualization (for example flip between area and bar charts, flip between radial and linear gauge, dynamically show/hide titles etc.)
  
• Panel Content Alignment
  Panel content alignment allows you to align the content of horizontally or vertically adjacent chart, legend and title areas. This allows you to create better looking dashboards with multiple panels.
  
• Twin Charts
  Twin charts allow you automatically align two adjacent charts areas.
  
• Conditional Data Points Appearance
  The filling and stroking of chart data points can now be specified with expressions. This allows you to quickly author complex "color coding" logic.
  
• Radar Axis Improvements
  Radar Axis Category labels have been improved to support different position, fit and alignment modes.
  

• Surface Improvements
  The Triangulated Surface has an option to simplify the data set. This allows for the visualization of large XYZ data sets.
  

• Step Line Improvements
  The Step Line has support for automatic data resampling. This allows for the visualization of very large datasets.
  

• Performance Improvements
  The chart has been additionally optimized for performance, which reduces the CPU load on the server and leads to smoother design time experience.
  

• Report Item Preview Improvements
  Added was support for three different types of report item preview in the properties dialog:
  - Normal - shows the report item preview in its exact size and aspect
  - Fit - fits the report item preview in the preview area by preserving the aspect ratio.
  - Stretch - stretches the report item preview in the preview area (brakes aspect ratio).
  

• Report Items Editing Improvements
  The report items properties dialog now loads faster than ever. Significant speed optimizations are also clearly visible in the instant preview generation. All operations that the user performs with the report items are encapsulated in designer transactions.