20.0.0 Introduction to Standard PODs
Portable Object Doclets (PODs) are portable snippets of Microsoft Word objects, meaning they can be moved within a Word or Excel Report Template, and used in other Report Templates.
PODs allow you to create a Template without recreating a Tag. Instead, you use an existing Template's Tags and tables to create new Tags for other Templates. You then simply drag and drop these PODs into a new Template.
PODs can include individual Tags, sets of Tags, and entire tables. They are defined once but may be reused in any number of Templates, any number of times.
This means Report Template developers spend less time constructing queries or trying to remember how to create a particular report construct, such as a table of financial data or a conditional agreement clause. And non-technical users find it easier than ever to connect to data sources and insert Tags and data into Templates.
This article is the launch point for learning how create, load and use PODs.
- Creating PODs may be done by the person who uses the PODs, or someone else may create them once so others can use them again and again.
- When you generate output that has been created using a POD, you don't have to do anything with the POD (RDLX) file. The only exception is when you're using datasets. In those cases, you will need the POD at output generation time.
- PODs to be used in Word must be created in Word. PODs to be used in Excel must be created in Excel.
Create, Load and Use POD Files
See these articles for information about creating, loading and using PODs:
The POD (.rdlx) File
The RDLX file can have a custom icon for any entry.
To assign a custom icon, you need to uuencode a .ico file and then place the uuencoded characters inside an <icon></icon> element that is a direct child of the POD item, datasource, and/or variable node (see attached sample).
The original .ico file should have a 16x16 and 48x48 bitmap.
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