Professional Microsoft® SharePoint® Server 2007 Reporting with SQL Server 2008 Reporting Services

12.2. Customizing the Appearance of a Gauge

Binding the pointer to a data field and changing the value's appearance will get your gauge working, but it still needs some work, since at this point it's not telling us anything different from the tablix below it. In the next sections, you will customize the appearance of the gauge to enhance its look and feel, which will result in getting the information across to the end user much faster. The steps for customizing the look and feel of a gauge are as follows:

1. Adding a range to a gauge

2. Adding a marker pointer to a gauge

3. Adding a label to a gauge

4. Configuring snapping intervals on a gauge

5. Using a custom image as a Pointer on a Radial Gauge

12.2.1. Adding a Range to a Gauge

One of the things that make a gauge very powerful is that it can easily display the ranges of a KPI. Your first step in customizing the appearance of the gauge will be adding the ranges defined earlier in this chapter. To add a range to your gauge, right-click the gauge surface, click the Add Range option, and then right-click the added range and click the Range Properties option to get the Range Properties dialog box, as shown in Figure 12-7.

Figure 12-7. Figure 12-7

Since the Sales Territory KPI has three ranges (Bad, Good, and Very Good), you will create three ranges for your gauge. Once you add your first range to the gauge, open the properties of the range, as demonstrated ...