The Standard Report Designer is for creating custom Reports based off of the Reports that display under your Reports tab in the Project Explorer and the Project Editor. While you can create a Report "from scratch", we recommend using an existing Report to take advantage of coding/formatting.
Some notable functions:
This will open up the New Project Wizard so you can create a report based off of an existing SI Report (recommended) or one "from scratch":
You can open an "Existing Report" - one that is currently Published (see below), or you can open an "Unpublished Reports" - one where you have used the Save for Later function (see below). This will open a form for you to select the report you want to edit:
This will not publish the report but will save your work for future edits. If the Report is already published, you can still use this function for editing the existing report but not Publishing the changes.
This will Publish the report to your machine only. Publishing means that the report is available for use in SI. It will not be shared with other SI Users and it will NOT be backed up. At any time you can come back into the Report Designer and choose the "Publish and Export to Server" function (see below), or you can use the Export/Import features in the Report Explorer interface:
This will Publish the report and copy it to your SI Server so that all other SI Users can access the report. We highly recommend using this option once you have finalized your report as only reports on your SI Server will be backed up when you run a backup.
There are various Controls in the Toolbox window. Use these to customize your reports. See the Active Reports Online Guide for more information.
The Canvas is where you design your report. There are various Sections (PageHeader1, GroupHeader1, Detail1, etc.) with various Fields and Controls.
The Report Explorer shows a hierarchy of all the Report Groups.
The Data Explorer lists all of the XML tags that can be dragged to the Canvas. Click here for more information.
The Properties window will display the Properties of a selected Field, Control, or Report section.