I can’t really see why an example is required. Think of a book. Have you ever seen a book with the table of contents on the front (or back) cover? No. Me either. Instead, the book has an outer cover, which we can consider to be the title page and then – inside the book – we have a table of contents, possibly after a few other pages of preamble. In Telerik reporting this could be emulated by nesting a report book that is configured to contain the TOC on its first page within an outer report book that lacks a TOC. There is *no* requirement for the TOC in the inner book to 'reach out' to the outer book: it simply needs to reference the bookmarks within its owning report book. So: that is my requirement:

1. Keep the current scheme whereby TOC for a report book can be placed at the start or the end of the report book.
2. Keep the current ability to nest one report book inside another.
3. Change Telerik reporting so that the TOC of an inner report book is honoured. This inner report book only has to consider the report book in which it is defined as its 'scope' - there is no requirement to show bookmarks from the outer report book or any sibling report books. At present, TOCs in nested report books are ignored. Page numbers may be an issue - see below.

I suppose the one complication in all of this is page numbering For my requirement it would suffice to restart at page 1 when a child report book with a TOC is found but this will almost certainly prove too restrictive. Perhaps this aspect could also be addressed if it isn't already. That is; when a report or report book is added to an outer report book, then can we specify a continuation or restart of page numbering? I believe this functionality already exists somewhere but I cannot recall specifics.

Mark Ward

My business requirement is simple and - I would have thought - not at all uncommon. Put simply, I need a title page, aka a front cover, that features database-derived values on it - e.g. the name of the fund, the report date, the company name. THEN I need the TOC and then the content. I am using report books to try to achieve this and  I have never seen a book where the TOC is effectively on the cover!
For me, a perfect solution to this scenario would be a report book within a report book. The outer book contains the title page (aka the front cover) and perhaps some extra information on extra pages before the inner book starts. The inner book would then contain the TOC (that refers only to its own content, not that of the outer book) followed by the content proper.
Unfortunately, this did not work as the inner book's TOC is not honoured.
I do not accept that this requirement is in any way odd. Perhaps the ability to fully customise the TOC's position, as I also suggested, would be that way, but to honour the TOC of a nested  report book would give MUCH more flexibility than the schemes already in place, which I do not believe work for me. 
I do not ask that the TOC reaches out to the outer report book. It should refer to its own content only. That is fair and reasonable. It should, of course, retain accurate page numbering, reflecting the TOC's true position in the resulting document.