SSRS line chart not connecting data points

Question

I've looked high and low and can't seem to find an answer to what appears to be quite a straightforward issues (I would think).

I have a line chart where there is data at several points in a series but only only one set of points link up.

Does anyone know why this is? Is it to do with my data? If it is, I am struggling to see any relationships in the data that may explain this behavior.

Here is what I mean:

As you can see, the red diamonds should be connecting - the same could be said about the blue squares and the dark blue triangles. Any thoughts?

Apologies if my colors are wrong - I'm colorblind.

Answer 1

Okay, so I worked this out.

Firstly, in order to get the lines to join up, you need to set the EmptyPoint colour for the series.

1. select your series in your chart
2. In the properties tab (not the dialog) drill down into the EmptyPoint property and set the colour to be Black

This will get them joining up - yay! But part of the line is colour and the other part is black, right? That's a bit silly, especially considering if you leave the colour to Automatic on the EmptyPoint that it will be transparent.

So, then we need to get the series and the EmptyPoint's colours in sync. Using code from here. I added some code to the code of the report.

1). Right click on an empty space on the report and select "Report Properties"
2). In the code tab, paste the following:

Private colorPalette As String() = {"#418CF0", "#FCB441", "#E0400A", "#05642E", "#1A3B69", "#BFBFBF", "#E0400A", "#FCB441", "DarkBlue", "Tomato", "Orange", "CornflowerBlue", "Gold", "Red", "Green", "LightBlue", "Lime", "Maroon", "LightSteelBlue", "Tan", "Silver"}
Private count As Integer = 0
Private mapping As New System.Collections.Hashtable()

    Public Function GetColor(ByVal groupingValue As String) As String

        If mapping.ContainsKey(groupingValue) Then
                Return mapping(groupingValue)
        End If

        Dim c As String = colorPalette(count Mod colorPalette.Length)
            count = count + 1
            mapping.Add(groupingValue, c)
            Return c
    End Function

Then we need to call this code when setting the colour of the series and of the EmptyPoint.

1. Select your series
2. In the properties tab paste something the following (replace WhateverTheGroupIsForYourSeries with your series group name): =Code.GetColor(Fields!*WhateverTheGroupIsForYourSeries*.Value)
3. Drill down to the color element of the EmptyPoint Series property
4. Paste the same text as from point two [e.g. =Code.GetColor(Fields!*WhateverTheGroupIsForYourSeries*.Value)]

And voila! You're done! I can't believe how unnecessarily difficult this is :D

Answer 2

I just had a problem where it was showing markers but not the lines. I ended up solving it by wrapping the expression in a CInt() to convert it to an integer.