Reporting News

Enhance Your WinForms Reports with Themes

February 16, 2024
Reporting controls with theming support transform reports into visually appealing documents that reinforce your brand identity.

Theme support in reporting controls allows you to customize the visual appearance of your reports without directly modifying individual elements. It works by applying pre-defined themes or creating custom ones, affecting aspects like fonts, colors, backgrounds, and layout. This simplifies report design, ensures brand consistency, and improves accessibility by adhering to user interface guidelines. Theme support is particularly valuable for generating multiple reports with a cohesive look and feel, catering to different audiences, or complying with specific accessibility standards.

Several WinForms reporting controls offer theme support including:

  • DevExpress Reports (Multi-Platform) (part of DevExpress Reporting) allows you to design cross-platform reports with pre-built themes and custom options for seamless branding.
  • ActiveReports.NET by MESCIUS leverages rich theming features and inheritance to create consistent, branded reports across different outputs.
  • Telerik Reporting lets you apply pre-defined or custom themes to ensure visual consistency and accessibility compliance in your reports.
  • Stimulsoft Reports.Net enables you to create visually unified reports with built-in themes and the ability to define custom themes for specific needs.

For an in-depth analysis of features and price, visit our WinForms reporting controls comparison.

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Integrate JSON Data into Your ASP.NET Core Reports

February 12, 2024
Choosing a reporting component with JSON format support offers interoperability and dynamic data handling for adaptable reports.

JSON support lets reporting tools directly use data in the human-readable JavaScript Object Notation format, unlocking flexibility, ease-of-use, and real-time insights. JSON enabled reports can directly consume diverse data, bypassing rigid schemas, thanks to the format's source-agnostic nature. This empowers developers with ease-of-use and efficiency, as JSON's readability simplifies integration and reduces code. Additionally, JSON seamlessly handles dynamic data, enabling real-time reporting for ever-changing insights.

Several ASP.NET Core reporting controls offer the ability to connect to JSON data sources including:

  • DevExpress Reports (Multi-Platform) (part of DevExpress Reporting) is a rich reporting solution that supports information from any data source, including JSON.
  • ActiveReports.NET by MESCIUS offers JSON data connectivity for .NET 8 applications, featuring a user-friendly report designer and flexible report components.
  • Telerik Reporting provides a powerful JSON data source component, allowing easy data aggregation, filtering and formatting in ASP.NET Core applications.
  • Stimulsoft Reports.Web provides intuitive design tools, supports connecting to a JSON data source, and can link data to a report via the report designer or with code.

For an in-depth analysis of features and price, visit our ASP.NET Core Reporting Controls comparison.

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Let Users Easily Design Reports in .NET 8

February 6, 2024
Telerik Reporting 2024 Q1 updates the standalone report designer to target .NET 8, offering code-free reporting using the latest framework.

Telerik Reporting is a comprehensive and lightweight embedded reporting tool for .NET web and desktop applications. It enables developers and reporting users to create, design, and export visually appealing, interactive, and reusable reports to effectively present analytical and business data. It supports various technologies, including ASP.NET Core, Blazor, ASP.NET MVC, ASP.NET AJAX, HTML5/JS, Angular, WPF, WinForms, and WinUI.

The Telerik Reporting 2024 Q1 release updates the standalone report designer's target framework from .NET 6 to .NET 8. The designer is a desktop based WYSIWYG reporting tool for Windows, powered by Telerik's reporting engine, that enables users to generate, modify, preview, export and share reports with ease, which can now be achieved using the latest version of Microsoft's popular framework.

To see a full list of what's new in 2024 Q1, see our release notes.

Telerik Reporting is licensed per developer and is available as a perpetual license with a one year support subscription, which is offered in three tiers: Lite, Priority or Ultimate. See our Telerik Reporting licensing page for full details.

Telerik Reporting is available to buy in the following products:

Unlock Data Insights with Drill Down Reporting

January 31, 2024
WinForms reporting components with drill-down support empower users to navigate summarized data, uncover details, and gain actionable insights.

Report drill down functionality allows users to explore deeper into summary data and discover detailed information. For a report showing sales by product category, visitors could click on a category to view a breakdown of individual products, and then drill down even further, by brand or model. This interactive capability promotes a greater understanding and discovery of trends within the report. The intuitive data navigation allows users to peel back layers of data to uncover trends, anomalies, and patterns that may not be obvious in summarized representations. Drilling down into data helps consumers make better decisions by giving them the precise insights they need to back up their conclusions.

Several .NET 8 WinForms Reporting components support drill down functionality, including:

  • DevExpress Reports lets you zoom in on data summaries for granular insights. Drill down from regional sales to city-level performance, then explore specific products.
  • List and Label Enterprise Reporting Edition by combit empowers you to navigate summarized data and gain deeper understanding. Explore sales by product category, then drill down to individual products and identify top sellers.
  • Telerik Reporting facilitates interactive exploration of summarized data. Visualize sales by country, then drill down to analyze regional trends and identify top-performing locations.

For an in-depth analysis of features and price, visit our .NET 8 WinForms Reporting Controls comparison.

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Personalize Report Output with Mail Merge

January 26, 2024
Reporting components with mail merge features can combine report templates with a data source to generate customized reports per recipient.

Mail merge in reporting software is a feature that allows users to automatically generate letters, labels, and other documents by merging a template with data. This is typically used to create personalized documents in bulk, such as invoices, form letters, or address labels, saving time and reducing errors compared to manually entering information. Mail merge is widely used in marketing, customer service, and administrative tasks, making it a valuable asset for any organization sending bulk communications.

Several WPF Reporting controls provide Mail Merge functionality including:

  • ActiveReports.NET by MESCIUS is a versatile reporting control that utilizes its included Formatted Text control to create mail merge reports.
  • TX Text Control .NET for WPF by Text Control empowers developers with comprehensive mail merge tools including customizable data sources, conditional formatting, and advanced templating.
  • List & Label Professional Reporting Edition by combit is a report designer and document generator that offers mail merge features, extensive data source support, and customizable templates.
  • FastReport WPF by Fast Reports simplifies mail merge with a user-friendly interface, a powerful report designer, and flexible data binding support.

For an in-depth analysis of features and price, visit our WPF Reporting Controls comparison.

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