About the course
Microsoft Report Builder is a powerful and intuitive tool specifically designed for business users and report authors to create sophisticated, operational, and pixel-perfect paginated reports. These reports are vital for generating highly formatted documents such as invoices, sales orders, detailed transactional lists, and summary dashboards requiring precise layout and formatting, commonly deployed within SQL Server Reporting Services (SSRS) and Power BI Report Server environments. This 3-day hands-on training course provides participants with the comprehensive skills needed to effectively use Microsoft Report Builder to connect to a variety of data sources, design visually appealing and functional report layouts, manipulate data for insightful analysis, and create interactive and professional reports ready for distribution.
The course begins with a thorough introduction to the Report Builder interface and workflow, covering the fundamental steps of connecting to different types of data sources (including shared and report-specific options) and defining datasets to retrieve the necessary information using the built-in Query Designer or by leveraging existing stored procedures. Participants will then delve into the core of report design, gaining practical experience working with the various data regions available in Report Builder. This includes mastering Tables, Matrices (ideal for cross-tab and pivot-style reports), Lists, and visually representing data using Charts, Gauges, and Maps, alongside utilising other essential report items such as Text Boxes, Images, and Subreports for modularity and complexity.
Beyond basic design, the course covers essential techniques for manipulating data within datasets by applying effective sorting, grouping, and filtering strategies to refine report outputs. A key section is dedicated to creating and effectively using report parameters, enabling end-users to interactively filter, sort, group, and customise the data they see in reports, including setting default values and creating dynamic parameter lists. Participants will also learn how to enhance reports with calculations and dynamic content using expressions, control report item visibility for interactive reports, implement interactive sorting directly in data regions, highlight exceptions in data based on conditions, and configure navigational features like document maps. The course concludes by covering the crucial steps of saving reports locally and sharing them to target environments like report servers (SSRS or Power BI Report Server) or SharePoint sites, understanding the options for viewing, printing, and exporting reports from these platforms, and setting up data-driven subscriptions for automated report delivery.
Instructor-led online and in-house face-to-face options are available - as part of a wider customised training programme, or as a standalone workshop, on-site at your offices or at one of many flexible meeting spaces in the UK and around the World.
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- Understand the purpose and interface of Microsoft Report Builder for creating paginated reports.
- Connect to various data sources and create datasets using the Query Designer or stored procedures.
- Design comprehensive report layouts using different data regions (Tables, Matrices, Lists, Charts, Gauges, Maps) and other report items.
- Format report items, data regions, and control report and page properties for professional presentation.
- Manipulate data within datasets using sorting, grouping, and filters to refine report outputs.
- Create and effectively use parameters to allow users to filter and customise report data interactively.
- Write expressions for calculations, dynamic visibility, conditional formatting (highlighting), and other report logic.
- Add interactive features to reports, such as interactive sorting and document maps.
- Save reports and share them to report servers (SSRS/Power BI Report Server) or SharePoint, and configure data-driven subscriptions for automated delivery.
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This 2-day hands-on training course is designed for individuals who need to create professional, operational, and paginated reports using Microsoft Report Builder. It is ideal for:
Business Analysts who need to create detailed reports from various data sources with specific formatting requirements.
Report Developers working with Microsoft SQL Server Reporting Services (SSRS) or Power BI Report Server to build operational reports.
Data Professionals responsible for building and maintaining reporting solutions that require precise layout and print-ready outputs.
Anyone needing to create pixel-perfect reports with precise layout and formatting.
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Participants should have:
A basic understanding of database concepts.
Familiarity with querying data is helpful (basic SQL knowledge is beneficial but the course will utilise the visual Query Designer and guide participants).
Comfortable using the Windows operating system.
We can customise the training to match your team's experience and needs - with more time and coverage of fundamentals for newer analysts, for instance.
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This Report Builder course is available for private / custom delivery for your team - as an in-house face-to-face workshop at your location of choice, or as online instructor-led training via MS Teams (or your own preferred platform).
Get in touch to find out how we can deliver tailored training which focuses on your project requirements and learning goals.
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Introduction to Microsoft Report Builder
What is Microsoft Report Builder? Purpose and capabilities (creating paginated reports).
Getting to know the Report Builder interface: Ribbon, panes (Report Data, Grouping, Layout), design surface.
Overview of key tools and functions.
Report Builder in the Microsoft Reporting Ecosystem (SSRS, Power BI Report Server, Power BI Service - Paginated Reports).
Hands-On Lab: Launching Report Builder, exploring the interface, starting a new blank report.
Connecting to Data
Understanding Data Sources: What they are and their role.
Types of Data Sources supported by Report Builder (e.g., SQL Server, Azure SQL, Analysis Services, ODBC, OLE DB).
Shared Data Sources vs. Report-specific Data Sources.
Configuring Data Source credentials.
Hands-On Lab: Creating a new Data Source connection to a sample database.
Retrieving Data
Understanding Data Sets: What they are and how they relate to Data Sources.
Using the Query Designer to build queries visually.
Writing SQL queries directly in the Query Designer.
Using Stored Procedures as a data source for a dataset.
Filtering data in the Query Designer.
Dataset properties.
Hands-On Lab: Creating Datasets using both the visual Query Designer and a simple SQL query, creating a dataset based on a stored procedure.
Designing Basic Reports - Tables and Layout
Report and page properties (page size, margins, orientation).
Adding Page Headers and Footers (static text, images).
Introduction to Data Regions: What they are and their purpose.
Designing reports using the Table data region: Adding fields, columns, detail rows, header rows.
Formatting Report items: Text boxes (fonts, colours, alignment), borders, numbers, dates, currency.
Adding Images to reports.
Hands-On Lab: Creating a basic tabular report using the Table data region, formatting report items, adding headers and footers.
Designing Reports - Matrices and Lists
Designing reports using the Matrix data region: Creating cross-tab or pivot-style reports.
Adding row and column groups in a Matrix.
Working with Matrix totals.
Designing reports using the List data region: Creating free-form layouts or repeating groups of data (e.g., forms, invoices).
Embedding other data regions within a List.
Hands-On Lab: Creating a cross-tab report using the Matrix data region, creating a report using the List data region.
Designing Reports - Visualisations
Designing reports using Chart data regions: Column, Bar, Line, Pie, Scatter, etc.
Configuring chart data, axes, titles, and legends.
Designing reports using Gauge data regions: Representing single values.
Designing reports using Map data regions: Visualising data geographically.
Hands-On Lab: Adding various types of charts, gauges, and maps to reports, configuring them to display data.
Manipulating Data Sets - Sorting, Grouping & Filtering
Sorting Data: Sorting data within a data region interactively or based on expressions.
Grouping Data: Creating row and column groups within Tables and Lists.
Adding group headers and footers.
Understanding scope in grouping.
Filters: Applying filters to Data Sets or Data Regions to limit displayed data.
Hands-On Lab: Applying sorting and grouping to reports, creating group headers/footers, adding filters to datasets and data regions.
Using Parameters with Your Data
Understanding the purpose of Parameters: Allowing user input to control report data and appearance.
Creating and using parameters in your reports.
Mapping parameters to dataset queries or filters.
Setting default values for parameters.
Creating parameter lists (static lists or dynamic lists from a query).
Using multi-value parameters.
Hands-On Lab: Creating various types of parameters (text, date, dropdown list), linking them to dataset queries and filters, setting default and available values.
Calculations and Expressions
Introduction to Expressions: Writing formulas for dynamic content, calculations, and conditional logic.
Syntax of expressions.
Using built-in functions (aggregate functions, string functions, date functions, etc.).
Performing calculations within data regions.
Calculating totals and subtotals.
Hands-On Lab: Writing expressions for calculations within tables and groups, using aggregate functions.
Enhancing Basic Reports with Expressions and Interactivity
Report item visibility: Using expressions to show or hide report items based on conditions or parameter values (Drilldown reports).
Interactive sorting: Allowing users to sort data by clicking column headers.
Using expressions to display Report information (execution time, page numbers) and parameter values in the report.
Highlighting Exceptions in Data: Applying conditional formatting to data points based on expression values (e.g., changing background colour for low values).
Using expressions to stripe Data rows (alternating row colours).
Implementing Document Maps for navigation in rendered reports.
Creating Sub Reports: Embedding one report within another.
Hands-On Lab: Implementing drilldown functionality, interactive sorting, conditional formatting, row striping, adding a document map, creating and using a subreport.
Saving and Sharing Reports
Saving local Reports (.rdl file).
Understanding the target environments for sharing paginated reports:
SQL Server Reporting Services (SSRS) Report Server.
Power BI Report Server.
Sharing/Embedding in SharePoint (via Report Server integration).
Saving Reports directly to a Report Server from Report Builder.
Deploying Report Builder reports as Paginated Reports in Power BI Service (via Power BI Desktop or Service upload - note this difference from direct save).
Hands-On Lab: Saving a report locally, saving/publishing a report to a configured Report Server instance (SSRS or Power BI Report Server).
Viewing, Printing, Exporting, and Subscriptions
Viewing reports from a Report Server or SharePoint interface.
Options for viewing and interacting with parameters in the viewer.
Printing reports from the viewer.
Exporting reports to various formats (PDF, Excel, Word, CSV, XML).
Introduction to Report Subscriptions: Automating report delivery.
Creating standard subscriptions.
Creating data-driven subscriptions for dynamic recipient lists and data.
Hands-On Lab: Accessing published reports via the web portal, experimenting with viewing/exporting, creating a standard and a data-driven subscription.
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Microsoft Report Builder Documentation: The primary and comprehensive source for instructions, features, and guides specific to the latest version of Report Builder.
SQL Server Reporting Services (SSRS) Documentation: Documentation covering the SSRS platform, which hosts Report Builder reports.
Paginated Reports in Power BI Service Documentation: Information on publishing and managing RDL reports (created in Report Builder) within the Power BI cloud service.
Power BI Report Server Documentation: Documentation for the on-premises report server that can host both Power BI reports and paginated reports created in Report Builder.
Write Transact-SQL Queries (Microsoft Learn): A resource for refreshing or learning basic SQL querying skills relevant to creating datasets.
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