Question

I need to develop a dashboard that will be displayed in a flat screen hanging from the wall. Not on a PC (of course, behind the cabinet or something there is a PC, but I mean, without any user involvement).

But the info to display does not fit a single screen, so I need to have 4-5 screens sliding / rotating with the info.

Is that something that can be done using SSRS 2008?

If yes, how?
If not, do you have good free/low-cost suggestions?

Thanks.

Answer 1

• Create the 4/5 ‘screens’ within their own Rectangle in the one report
• Set the AutoRefresh property of the report to x number of seconds you want for the rotation to occur.
• Based on the AutoRefresh length you have set, set the visibility of the various rectangles based on a formula.

Example

• Set AutoRefresh to 15 seconds
• We will assume you have 4 rectangles/’slides’
• Therefore, each slide will be shown once every minute
• We set the visibility of each rectangle independently using an IIf() function and testing the current time with the Now() function
• Rectangle 1
  • =IIf(Second(Now()) < 15, False, True) the rectangle will show if the AutoRefresh occured during the first 15 second block of the current minute, all other times during that minute it will be hidden.
• Rectangle 2
  • =IIf(Second(Now()) >= 15 AND Second(Now()) < 30, False, True) the rectangle will show if the AutoRefresh occurred during the second 15 second block of the current minute, all other times during that minute it will be hidden.
• Rectangle 3
  • =IIf(Second(Now()) >= 30 AND Second(Now()) < 45, False, True) the rectangle will show if the AutoRefresh occurred during the third 15 second block of the current minute, all other times during that minute it will be hidden.
• Rectangle 4
  • =IIf(Second(Now()) >= 45, False, True) the rectangle will show if the AutoRefresh occurred during the fourth 15 second block of the current minute, all other times during that minute it will be hidden.

Other combinations can be done for the IIf() looking at the current Minute() or current Hour(). The Mod() function could also be used to show things every say 5 minutes as well.