Applying Report Templates
After you design a report template, you can apply it to multiple report definitions to enforce a consistent look and feel across all these reports.
Applying a report template to a report definition applies all the mapped classes defined in the template to the corresponding classes in the report definition based on a class-mapping relationship. This takes place on two levels:
• On the section level, when a section class—a class defined by the header, footer, page header, page footer, detail, or a group section in the report template—is applied to the mapped header, footer, page header, page footer section in the report definition, all the contents in the template section are copied over to the report definition section.
Note: This does not apply to the detail and group sections in the report definition.
• On the field level, when a field class—a class defined by the field in the report template—is applied to a mapped field in the report definition, a predefined set of properties are copied from the template field to the report definition field.
The class-mapping relationships are defined as a step in
Creating a New Report Template.
To apply an existing report template to a report definition
Do one of the following:
• When
Creating a Report Definition using Report Wizard, in the Select Template step of the Report Wizard, select the report template from the template list.
• In Report Designer, click the Manager button on the toolbar and assign the report template to the report definition in Report Definition Manager. For details, see
Managing Report Definition Files.
Once the report template is applied to the report definition, the changes in layout and formatting immediately take effect in Report Designer.