Step 3 - Row Grouping and Page Breaks

If we want have a formatted report print one student per page for multiple students or print multiple pages for a single student, we will need to first understand row grouping.

A row group is a group of multiple rows within a table that are committed to populating the included cells and fields with information related to one student at a time. This process ensures that even if we run a report for multiple students, the data that gets populated within the row group is for the specific student and will not show up again for other students. To view which row group we are currently working in, click any cell within our table and the Row group tab will appear at the bottom of the screen. It will show up with the name Details1.

Clicking on that row group will open up the properties menu for it on the right side, providing you with some options such as adding a page break. When you check off the page break box you will be prompted to fill in where the page break should occur. For most purposes the page break is best at the end of the group.

NOTE:  The report doesn’t insert the page break after the user checks it off for the row group. This is currently a known issue and here is the workaround.

Save the report and get out of the report designer. From the main menu go to More Tools- Files & Tasks- File Manager. Use the dropdown menu to go to Student- Custom Reports. Here you will find the report you are working on. Download the RDL file and open it in Notepad++. Click the Ctrl key and F key at the same time to open up a search window. Enter for the word ‘pagebreak’ and click the Find Next button, it will bring you to a section of code where the page break is entered. Delete the line ‘<Disabled>True<Disabled> and save:

Now go back into the edsembli file manager and replace the report RDL file existing in the manager with the RDL file you just modified. If you now go into the report designer and preview the report you will see that the page break works.

Applying a page break to the end of the row group will ensure that you print one student per page in the scenario that you can contain all of the individual students information within the one row group.

In the scenario where you are expecting a report to be multiple pages for a single student, you will need multiple row groups. The last row group on the first page will need to have a page break set up and then the last row group on the second page will also need a page break set up. To add a second row group, open up the row group tab at the bottom of the screen and click on the down arrow for the current row group, select Add Group- Parent Group. 

You will be prompted to select which field from the main query will act as the group to ensure all the data stays consistent for the student. It is recommended to select a field that is unique for each student such as PersonId or ContactListId. This will create a parent group as well as insert a new column in the table. 

If you don't need this column then you can click on the column to delete it.

A prompt will come up asking if you want to delete the column only or the column and the group. Choose to only delete the column.

Now that we have the parent group set up, we can create the sibling groups. Click on the the down arrow for the original Details1 row group and choose to Add Group- Adjacent After. This will create a new row group and will prompt you to set how it will be grouped. Select the same field that we used for the parent group.

An extra row will be added to the table. This row is a part of the new row group we just created.

If we have a page break in the original Details1 row then we can expect the new row group to start on the second page of the report. Adding a page break to this new row group will ensure everything after it starts on a new page.

With every new row group that is created, the system forces us to set which field the row is grouped on. However, the original Details1 row group doesn't have this set yet. To set it up click on Details1 at the bottom of the screen and in the properties menu on the right side click 'Set Groups'. You can apply the field for grouping here.

We now know how to new create row groups as well as apply page breaks to our reports.