About Editing Report Code

The introduction of the Report Editor has meant that most of the XML code editing that used to be required to create custom reports can now be achieved through the Report Editor user interface. However, there are two scenarios that did not make it into this first version of the report editor.

• Query Sources
  The Query Sources section of a Report file allows you to detail the sites that you want the report to query in the report itself. This can be very useful if you want to query off multiple site collection or specific sites located in various locations in a site collection hierarchy (you should note that Portfolios allow you to specify a collection of sites to query).
• View Descriptor
  The View Descriptor section of a Report file allows you to define how the report appears (e.g. columns, grouping, sorting etc.) on a web part page before any changes have been made on the Reporter Settings page.

Methodologies

To edit reports you will need a code editor.

SharePoint Designer with Server Access

If you have the correct server access, you can use SharePoint Designer to navigate to the BrightWork Reporter library and edit the report XML files directly. This is the recommended method for editing Query Sources.

SharePoint Designer or Other Code Editor without Server Access

If you do not have the correct server access, you can still use SharePoint Designer (or another code editor) to edit the reports. Download the report to your desktop and make your edits there. When you are finished, upload the report back to the BrightWork Reporter Library and ensure Overwrite existing files is selected.

Visual Studio or Visual Studio Community

If you have Visual Studio or Visual Studio Community, you can take advantage of Visual Studio's Intellisense for code validation and prompting.