I’m currently working as a Business Analyst implementing Epicor Kinetic.
In our supply chain business, many of our customers prefer their invoices in landscape format due to the detailed descriptions of some of our products.
However, Epicor provides out-of-the-box SSRS reports in portrait orientation. I’m wondering if anyone has experience converting a portrait SSRS report to landscape using Report Builder.
Is there a quick and efficient way to rotate the layout and reposition all fields accordingly? I’m aiming to minimize the time spent on reformatting.
You can edit the RDL file and change the page layout to landscape in Report Builder, plus adjust the rest of the fields accordingly. You’ll need to make a custom Report Style but I’ve never seen a company use the out-of-the-box AR Invoice report. Everyone makes a custom version.
This could have been a full invoice too versus just HTML email with attached PDF of their invoice
To answer the original question AFAIK, there is no simple converter, you would need to follow @Randy’s advise and create custom report with the adjusted field layouts.
Work with the stake holders and create a mock-up of changes needed to the stock report. Identify any non-stock tables & fields in Epicor that need to be added to the RDD. Get properly sized image files of company logo and other images they may want added. Probably a copy of the T&Cs (or a website URL) to add to the report footer. Then first get the RDD customized and then the Report Style.
Ya, it is using a report style with an expanded dataset to include more info that the original report. It’s setup to store prints & sent emails in AR group’s shared mailbox. The lower half of the HTML email goes out to the customer emails along with the modified AR SSRS PDF. My point was you could create a full HTML style email using APR if you really wanted an updated look that would print prettily in landscape format right from email and/or the SSRS PDF to go with. You don’t actually have to send the PDF version of the invoice with the APR email.
My tip is to reset your expectations. SSRS reports are already difficult and clunky to work with. Adding in the Epicor context makes it 10x slower and more complicated. There is no shortcut and you can’t just copy and paste other people’s reports to your system for many reasons. Just get good at SSRS or contract it out to somebody who is.
Just gonna leave this link here for posterity. Sqlservercentral’s stairways are an absolute gold mine for getting to know boring data tools. And let’s be honest… Analysts with SSRS skills are common. Convincing someone to hire one for SSRS reasons is a whole 'nother matter. Every expert started out clueless, which is why it’s awesome that these stairways exist.
Okay, okay, to the point! The answer to this specific question: Right click on the background. Not the report’s body, the background in VS that it’s displayed on.
