We are currently preparing various samples to demonstrate the capabilities of Enesys RS Data Extension. One of our goal with those samples is that they can be used in real world scenarios with minor modifications.

Sales Lead Pipeline application template reporting solution

We will soon release a complete reporting solution based on the “Sales Lead Pipeline” application template released by Microsoft as part of their application template samples. The reporting solution developed with BIDS 2008 can be used as-is or further customized to accommodate specific needs.

Here is an overview of the reports that will be available in the reporting solution:

Using property bags values in your reports

When using SharePoint property bags to store values at the site or list level, you may be interested to use those values in your own reports. It could be configuration values that you would like to use as parameter values for some specific reports. You may also simply want to display all those properties in a simple well designed report.

This can be done using the new “xmlQuery” statement available in Enesys RS Data Extension 3.1 (Standard and Enterprise editions only). The “xmlQuery” statement can retrieve data in XML format from an URL you specify.

Based on this we have developed a SharePoint feature that will install an ASPX page in the Layouts folder. This page will query property bag values for list, site or site collection and returns the data into XML format.

Once this feature is installed, you can query the page using “xmlQuery” statement as shown in the following screen shot:

It is currently being tested by a customer. Once we have ensured it is working as expected, we will be releasing the feature publicly.