What's new for KPIs and mobile reports in SQL Server 2016 RC1

Well, we’re moving quickly with our SQL release candidates, and here we are now with RC1 and all its goodness.  In fact, this release offers the biggest enhancements yet to both the Mobile Reports and KPI’s functionality in Reporting Services since we introduced them both last December.

To get started, make sure you have the following items installed -

Add Related Content to your KPI’s

With this latest release, you may add a related mobile report or URL to any KPI’s you’ve created.  You’ll see this option now available in the Create/Edit screens.
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Choose the item you wish to associate with the KPI from the dropdown menu.  You’ll see any related content for a KPI by clicking on the KPI in the new portal.

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Note: This functionality is not yet available for KPI’s when using the Power BI mobile app.

KPI data aggregation now available

Previously, KPI’s were limited to returning the first row of data from a dataset for both Goal and Value, which limited your ability to use a single dataset for both a report and KPI effectively.  With this release, when you choose to use a dataset for either Value or Goal, a new dropdown option is available for aggregation.  Now, you can now select an entire column in your dataset and select an aggregation option (First, Last, Min, Max, Average, Sum) to set the value.

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Extended KPI Trend Set support

With RC1, when you select a dataset for a Trend Set, Reporting Services will look the entire column of data brought in.

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By looking at the entire column vs. just the first few rows, Reporting Services is now able calculate a trend set that best represents the totality of the data imported.  It relies on the sort order of the dataset to do this calculation effectively, so make sure that’s set properly in your dataset before using this in your KPI.

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New URL for Mobile Report Publishing

As mentioned in Riccardo’s post introducing RC1, the modern web portal has replaced the classic report manager and is now the default experience.  With that change, you no longer need to connect to your server using the pattern – myreportserver/reports_preview in the Mobile Report Publisher.

Instead, you will connect using the default “reports” location – myreportserver/reports as illustrated below

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Parameterized Datasets now supported in Mobile Reports

Prior to this release, users couldn’t create Mobile Reports against datasets that had any parameterized values.  With the latest update to the Mobile Report Publisher (Public Preview 3), that’s no longer the case.

To use this new functionality, you need to create a shared dataset that has at least one parameter.

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Now, when you bring the dataset into the Mobile Report Publisher, you’ll see a new option called “Param.” in the menu

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Here, you can choose report elements that will pass values to each parameter

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Now, each time a value is selected in your mobile report, the dataset will be queried again with the new parameter value to bring back a new result set.

Set Drill-through target for elements in Mobile Reports

 

You can now set a drill-through target for specific elements in your mobile reports, whether it is another mobile report or a Custom URL that you set.  You can also pass parameters through to the target as well, based on selections you’ve made in your mobile report.

To set a drill-through target, select the mobile report element on the layout pane of the Mobile Report Publisher.  You’ll see a new button available labeled “Drill-through Target”

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When you click this button, you’ll be presented with two options – Mobile Report or Custom URL

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When you select Mobile Report, you’ll have the option to select another mobile report on your Report Server you wish to set as the target, and which elements should be tied to parameters you have available

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Or, you can set a custom URL (to a paginated report, perhaps) where you can construct a URL that includes any or all you available selected parameters on the mobile report

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Once finished, when you preview or run the report, you’ll see an arrow icon in the upper right hand corner of the element.  This will let the user know there is a drill-through action available if they select an item.

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More to come

As always, make sure you check the release notes and we’ll have a companion post to this around what’s new in the paginated reports in the next few days.

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