What to Expect from Telerik Reporting in 2015, Q1 and Beyond

A new year is coming, and we have a bunch of new exciting features to work on. And these are not chosen by chance. They aim to solve the problems that you face most often when building reports in your everyday work. We learned about those items, as usual, from the feedback we received from you:

• In the survey we sent you in the beginning of October
• In the feedback portal
• From support tickets
• From what you shared with us here and there

And, I’m very excited to share with you what came up out this collection.

What Will Come with Q1 2015?

Report Server (Preview)

One of the major stories next year will be the Report Server. We hope to release a Preview version with Q1 2015. This Preview will include the actual server implementation where the reports will be stored and a friendly web application for managing and sharing those reports.

Visual Studio 2015, MVC6, Visual Studio Project and Item Templates

New Visual Studio, .NET Framework and ASP.NET MVC versions are on the way. We already support the Preview with Telerik Reporting Q3 2014 SP1. Once Microsoft officially releases, we will make sure everything works smoothly and have a release built with the latest bits.

We are also working on new project and item templates for all Visual Studio supported versions. They should cover some of the most commonly used report setups. The idea is to help you get started faster when building your customer reports. We will probably start with a few and add more later.

Report Engine and Report Items Enhancements

• Subscript and superscript for the HTML TextBox report item
• Text justification for the HTML TextBox report item
• Ability to render report and group footer sections at the bottom of the page instead of after the last content item

What’s to Follow Later in 2015?

Report Server (Continued)

The features to follow for the Report Server are:

• Integration with report viewers and with the standalone report designer: Such integration will enable you to show reports that are stored on the server in your applications by directly referencing the reports stored on the report server. Or if you need to add or update a report that is available on the server, you can easily do that in the standalone report designer, with no additional setup.
• Report scheduling, data alerts and notifications: This will allow you to instruct the server to automatically do something with a report in a specified time, for example, to run a certain report through the night and send it to group of recipients. Or you can be notified when certain conditions are met, such as sales just gone wild.

Report Designer and Viewers Improvements

Along with the usual bug fixing and stabilization efforts, performance and usability improvements we plan to add include:

• Smart tag-like editor for the TextBox: A report item integrated in Visual Studio and a standalone report designer, this editor will expose the most commonly used setting in the TextBox to help you set it up faster. If you like it and find it useful, more report items will leverage similar editors.
• Tooltips enhancements: There are details that you can’t add to the report, but instead show in a tooltip. With some of next year's versions, you'll be able to set/bind the tooltip value for an item, for example a chart series. The tooltip content will be displayed in the report viewer once the end user interacts with the item using a mouse (or keyboard) to adhere to the report.

More Features Requested by You

Many of you requested:

• Absolute position container items shrink ability
• Custom actions for reports
• Drill-down for map report items

No need to elaborate on them; I know you all are happy to see them listed (phew).

Which is Your Favorite Feature on the List?

Tell us which feature will make you most happy in 2015. Share what you think about Telerik Reporting roadmap. If you can’t find your favorite, leave a comment below or try the feedback portal. Vote for an existing item or create one to start collecting votes.