如何使用颜色或标签格式化.rdl报告结果

Question

I am new to CRM and SQLServer Reporting and I am trying to create a report that displays all notes from different entities. For those who are not familiar with CRM below is the description for the report: I have entity A (FilteredAnnotation - keeps records of notes of different entities), which has a field called notetext that stores text (note) and objectid which stores a GUID related to a particular entity. For instance, the GUID stored in this field can be related to lets say Entity B (Filterednew_candidate) or Entity C (FilteredNew_attainmentmilestone), or other entities as in CRM every entity has relationship to Annotation's entity.

In my case, the person running the report will input a reference number to entity B (candidate). The entity candidate has relationship with entity C (attainmentmilestone), so basically I want the report to display all notes (retrieved from entity A - annotation) that are linked to a particular candidate.

At the moment I have my query running good and displaying all results but the problem is that there is nothing to separate or specify from where exactly the notes come from. Basically, I want to be able to show or differ notes of Entity B and C. I can think of idea: a) Be able to write their entity Name on top of each record, so it would be something like: Candidate: result Stream: result PROBLEM: I have tried obtaining the name of the table but it displays the filterednew_ which is not very attractive to the client. So, would I be able to cut that result so it only display everything after the underline?

b) Be able to change color according to the result. For example, if note is from Entity B, then the table line would be of color red else the table line would be of color blue? PROBLEM: Since I am new to that and I am using XML, .rdl I can't think of a way to do that.

As the result obtained from select is kind of displayed in a foreach, I do not know how to add or differ whether result is from Entity B or C.

My current report is displaying notes of entity B and C from a particular person but the result is not readable its all under notetext column without any separation.

Would anyone know whether I could change the line colour according to whether its entity B or C, or even add a text to the top of results covering entity B, then another text for results covering entity C without losing much performance?

Answer 1

Simplest way would be to use the ObjecttypeName selected from Annotation, this will differentiate to who the notes belong\\associated to.

Or you will require some reporting coding (if you want to do the colouring thing):

under Report >> Report Properties >> Code

create a function that will test for fieldname, you could pass a parameter as a string when selecting from whatever entity something like:

SELECT B.*, 'B' as entityName FROM entityB B  --when from 'B' 
SELECT C.*, 'C' as entityBane FROM entity C  --when from 'C'

and call it entityName (used in my example below) or use the ObjecttypeCode in MSCRM to differentiate between owners of the Annotation\\Note.

Function NoteColor(ByVal entityName As String) As String
  If entityName = 'B' Then
    Return 'lightblue'
  Else
    Return 'grey'
  End If
End Function

Then on each cell, set the BackgroundColor as follows:

=Code.NoteColor(Fields!['entityNane'])