DevExpress BI Dashboard — New Export Capabilities (v23.1)

In our v23.1 release cycle, we extended export capabilities for BI Dashboard items. These enhancements are available for WinForms, WPF and Web platforms and include the following options:

• Export Custom Dashboard items to Excel and customize the exported document itself
• Customize Pivot Grid Dashboard items during export

Custom Item Export to Excel

v23.1 allows you to export Custom Dashboard items using all supported export formats for built-in Dashboard items. This includes:

• PDF
• Image
• Excel (XLS, XLSX)

An Export to Excel option has been added to the Export To drop-down (located within a Custom Dashboard item’s caption).

For Web platforms, you can display the Export To option for an individual Custom Dashboard item within your BI Dashboard by overriding the allowExportSingleItem method in the item’s configuration file:

class FunnelChartItemViewer extends Dashboard.CustomItemViewer {
   //...
    allowExportSingleItem() {
        return true;
    }
}

The Dashboard control exports custom item data in tabular format. Each column corresponds to a data item.

Customize Exported Documents

You can now customize generated documents (for custom dashboard items) when handling the control’s CustomizeExportDocument event. To help you obtain custom item data and modify the layout of the generated document, we added the following methods in event arguments:

• e.GetItemData (WinForms)
• e.GetItemData (Web)
• e.GetDashboardItem (Web)

For example, you can generate an XLSX document using the Spreadsheet Document API (included in our Office File API suite) to customize headers:

Refer to the following help topics for more information in this regard:

• Custom Item Export in WinForms Dashboards
• Custom Item Export in Web Dashboards

Pivot Grid Item - Custom Export

Our BI Dashboard control raises the CustomExport event before saving the exported document to PDF and image formats. Use this event to obtain the printable XRPivotGrid control for PivotDashboardItem and customize the Pivot Grid item in the exported document.

The example below illustrates the use of different events and customization settings for the XRPivotGrid control (to customize Pivot Grid item elements).

• Dashboard for WinForms - How to Customize the Pivot Grid Item on Export

Specifically, the GitHub example listed above addresses the following:

• Removes specified columns and rows.
• Renames columns.
• Removes rows by value.
• Resizes columns and rows.
• Changes row appearance.
• Customizes grand totals.

The strategy outlined in this example is applicable to all CustomExport events as well.

• ASPxDashboard.CustomExport
• DashboardExporter.CustomExport
• DashboardConfigurator.CustomExport
• DashboardDesigner.CustomExport
• DashboardViewer.CustomExport
• DashboardControl.CustomExport
• IDashboardControl.CustomExport

What’s New in v23.1

Refer to the following web page to learn more about our most recent BI Dashboard release (and rate the release by voting in our online poll): Business Intelligence Dashboard v23.1.