Reporting Services 2008 R2 has many new great features that I’ve written about lately (Data Bars and Indicators).  Today I wanted to tell you a little about another nice add called Report Parts.  Report Parts allow you the developer to create an object (graphs, charts, tables, etc…) and then your power users that actually develop reports in Report Builder 3.0 to use those objects in the reports they develop. 

As the developer when you want to publish a Report part to the server.  You will use the menu options Report->Publish Report Parts.  Report Parts can be deployed from Report Builder also.

The object is stored on the server and can be picked up inside of Report Builder while developing.

Inside Report Builder a power user can browse the Report Part Gallery to find the Report Part needed for their report.  This looks very similar to the clip art browser in Word.

Another great thing about Report Parts is when you the developer makes a change to the object all the power user has to do is check for updates on it and the Report Builder will automatically update the object.