Report Solution Patterns and Recipes - Professional SQL Server 2005 Reporting Services - page 309

Figure 7-49

Creating a Custom Column Sort Report
Building your own interactive sort feature has the advantage of using custom images and other sorting
hotspots. The report user could click the text in the column header, an icon, or any other image of your
choice and/or use parameter selections to change the report or item sort order. In the following example,
I will use the column header text to sort by the chosen column and then show a custom image to indi-
cate ascending or descending sort order.

What you'll need:

❑ A table item presenting a columnar set of values.

❑ Table heading or group heading items used as column sort toggle items.

❑ Thumbnail images used to indicate a column's sort direction.

❑ A set of report parameters used to manage the sort column name and direction.

❑ Action expressions used to modify report parameter values.

❑ Expressions used in the table or group Sort property, using report properties.

Figure 7-50 shows a simple table with text headings, a detail row, and totals in the report footer. You can
see that I've placed images in separate columns and then merged the field text boxes. I do this so the
up/down arrow images appear near the column header text. These columns are merged on the detail
row so the fields have enough room. Each of the three sortable columns has text with underscores to
indicate that these are links. This is just a visual effect until the navigation actions are set for these text
boxes.