Steve Thompson

The nice thing about BIDS (Business Intelligence Developer Studio) is the ability to add custom code to an individual report, or to an entire Report Project by using a .NET assembly.  During a recent presentation on SSRS and ConfigMgr at MMS, I made the statement that if one needed to use custom code in a report that they had to use BIDS, and not Report Builder to accomplish this technique. I want to thank John Nelson, aka Number2 for pointing out that code could indeed be used with RB 3.0 and sending a pointer.  In full disclosure, 98% of my report development is done using BIDS 2005, soon to move to the next version.

Prior to my presentation, I did not discover how to insert code in RB 3.0 and I did search both the product and the web. 

In light of this, I need to correct my inaccurate statement, and document this as it may not necessarily be easily discovered.

Two methods of locating the code window in RB 3.0.

RB 3.0 Method 1

From RB 3.0, click any where in the blue background around the report, not on the report itself

Right click Report Properties, then Code properties on left. Insert custom code in the window on the right.

RB 3.0 Method 2

Click the View tab on the report menu, enable the Properties check box (off by default), then click the ellipses to the right of Code on the report property sheet.

This will open the Report Property, code dialog shown above.

BIDS 2005

Right Click on the black square, upper right corner of the report then select Properties.

BIDS 2008

Similar process to RB 3.0, method 1 & method 2.

In a subsequent blog post I’ll explain a couple of reasons why you may need to use code, provide sample code and how to invoke the custom code from Report Builder.