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Create a Detailed Report using Report Designer

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You can track your team's progress more easily by creating reports that contain detailed information from Visual Studio Application Lifecycle Management (ALM). For example, you can create a report that includes details such as titles of work items. To create this type of report, you can use SQL Server's Report Designer and the relational database of the data warehouse for Visual Studio ALM.

After you create your first report, you might change it by experimenting with different data and layouts. For example, you could group the table by the Assigned To field.

If you have not created reports for Visual Studio ALM before, see Create, Customize, and Manage Reports for Visual Studio ALM. For more information about how to use Report Designer, see the Microsoft Web site: Designing and Implementing Reports Using Report Designer. To create reports that primarily show aggregate information, see Create an Aggregate Report using Report Designer and the Analysis Services Cube.

Prerequisites

To perform this procedure, you must have Visual Studio and SQL Server Business Intelligence Development Studio installed on the same computer.

Note

To install Business Intelligence Development Studio, run the Setup program for SQL Server, and select the Client Components check box when you specify the components to install. To install the most recent service pack for SQL Server, see the following page on the Microsoft Web site: How to obtain the latest service pack for SQL Server 2008.

Required Permissions

To perform this procedure, you must be a member of the following roles:

To create a report

  1. In Visual Studio, create or open a Report Server project. For more information, see Create a Report Server Project for Visual Studio ALM.

  2. On the Project menu, choose Add New Item.

    The Add New Item dialog box appears.

  3. Choose Report Wizard, and then choose Add.

    The Report Wizard opens to the Select Data Source page.

  4. Choose the TFS2010ReportDS shared data source, and then choose Next.

    The wizard advances to the Design the Query page.

    Note

    The data source that you specify connects to the relational database from the data warehouse for Team Foundation Server. Even though you might have installed or upgraded to TFS 2013, the database name of TFS2010ReportDS is used. This is the same name that was assigned to the data sources with the installation or upgrade to TFS 2010.For more information, see Choose the Source of Data and Authoring Tool for Your Reports for Visual Studio ALM. If your project does not have this data source, create it. For more information, see Create a Report Server Project for Visual Studio ALM.

  5. Choose Query Builder.

    The Query Build dialog box appears.

To create the query that will retrieve the data for the report

  1. Choose Generic Query Designer on the query builder toolbar to enable the query designer.

  2. Choose Add Table on the query builder toolbar.

    The Add Table dialog box appears.

  3. Choose the Current Work Item table, and then choose Add.

  4. Choose the Work Item table, and then choose Add.

    This table contains the Work Item dimension.

  5. Choose the Person table, choose Add, and then choose Close.

    This table contains the Person dimension. The fact table for current work items has foreign keys to this table for the Assigned To, Changed By, and Created By fields.

  6. In the Work Item table, select the check boxes for System_Title and System_State.

  7. In the Person table, select the check box for Person.

  8. In the query pane, delete the clauses that use Changed By and Created By so that you now have the following query.

    SELECT Person.Person, [Work Item].System_State
FROM   [Current Work Item] INNER JOIN
       [Work Item] ON [Current Work Item].[Work Item] =
       [Work Item].__ID INNER JOIN
       Person ON [Current Work Item].[Assigned To] = Person.__ID

  9. Choose Run on the query builder toolbar to verify that the query works, and then choose OK.

    The Query Builder is closed, and the Design the Query page of the Report Wizard reappears.

To design the report layout

  1. Choose Next.

    The wizard advances to the Report Type page.

  2. Choose Tabular, and then choose Next.

    The wizard advances to the Design the Table page.

  3. Choose System_Title, and then choose Details.

  4. Choose Person, and then choose Details.

  5. Chose System_State, choose Group, and then choose Next.

    The wizard advances to the Choose the Table Layout page.

  6. Choose the layout options that you prefer, and then choose Next.

    The wizard advances to the Choose the Table Style page.

  7. Choose any style, and then choose Next.

    The wizard advances to the Completing the Report page.

  8. Type a name for the report, choose Preview Report, and then choose Finish to create the report.

    The wizard closes, and the report document window appears with the Preview tab active.

To deploy the report

  1. In Solution Explorer, choose the report.

  2. On the Build menu, choose Deploy ReportName.

    Important

    To successfully deploy the report, your project settings must be set to appropriate values. For more information, see Create a Report Server Project for Visual Studio ALM.

See Also

Tasks

Create a Report Server Project for Visual Studio ALM

Create an Aggregate Report using Report Designer and the Analysis Services Cube

Concepts

Generate Reports Using the Relational Warehouse Database for Visual Studio ALM

Other Resources

Create and Manage Reporting Services Reports for Visual Studio ALM