Adding Links to a Report (Report Builder 2.0)

You can add links that allow users to open Web pages or other reports, or jump to another location within the same report. To add a link, you define an action for a report item such as a text box, image, chart, or gauge. Use the Action page of the corresponding properties dialog box to set the type of link. When the user clicks that report item, the action that you define takes place. Report Builder 2.0 supports three types of links with the following actions:

  • Bookmark links   Jump to other areas within the report.

  • Drillthrough report links   Jump to other reports on the same report server.

  • Hyperlinks   Jump to URLs that specify the address of Web pages or reports on a report server by using URL access.

A bookmark link is a link that a user clicks to move to another area or report item in a report. To create a bookmark, set a bookmark on the destination report item and add bookmark links on report items that users should click, such as a word or image, to jump to the bookmarked report item. You can set bookmarks on any report item, including text boxes, images, charts, and gauges. You can add multiple bookmark links to the same bookmark. For more information, see How to: Add a Bookmark to a Report (Report Builder 2.0).

A drillthrough report is a report that a user opens by clicking a link within another report. Drillthrough reports commonly contain details about an item that is contained in an original summary report. For example, you might have a sales summary report with a list of orders and sales totals. When a user clicks an order number in the summary list, another report opens that contains details about the order.

Note

In Report Builder 2.0, drillthrough links are supported only when you have an active connection to a report server. For more information, see Running the Report (Report Builder 2.0).

A drillthrough report serves a different purpose than a subreport. A subreport is processed as part of the main report. For example, if a subreport that displays order detail information is added to a table cell in the detail row, the subreport is processed once per row of the table and rendered as part of the main report. A drillthrough report is only processed and rendered when the user clicks the drillthrough link in the summary main report.

A drillthrough report typically contains parameters that are passed to it by the summary report. In the sales summary report example, the summary report includes the field [OrderNumber] in a text box in a table cell. The drillthrough report contains a parameter that takes the order number as a value. When you set the drillthrough report link on the text box for [OrderNumber], set the parameter for the target report to [OrderNumber]. When the user clicks order number in the summary report, the target detail report opens and displays the information for that order number. To view instructions about customizing drillthrough reports based on parameter values, see Adding Parameters to Your Report (Report Builder 2.0) and InScope Function (Report Builder 2.0).

To preview a summary report with drillthrough links on the report client, you must set the drillthrough report name to a report in the current project. To view a summary report with drillthrough links after it is published, you must ensure that the drillthrough reports reside on the same report server as the summary report. The drillthrough report name can contain a relative or absolute path to the report. You can add drillthrough links to text boxes, images, charts, and gauges. For more information, see How to: Add a Drillthrough Action on a Report (Report Builder 2.0).

You can add a hyperlink to a report item so that a user can access a Web page by clicking the item. A hyperlink can be a static URL or an expression that evaluates to a URL. If you have a field in a database that contains URLs, the expression can contain that field, resulting in a dynamic list of hyperlinks in the report. You can add hyperlinks to text boxes, images, charts, and gauges. For more information, see How to: Add a Hyperlink to a URL (Report Builder 2.0).

You can also specify URLs to reports on any report server that you and your users have permission to view using URL requests to the report server, known as URL access. For example, you can specify a report and hide the document map for the user when they first view the report. For more information, see "URL Access" in the Reporting Services documentation in SQL Server Books Online.