Some late code changes to the ProgressTracker CRI sample featured in my MSDN Magazine article "Jazz Up Your Data Using Custom Report Items In SQL Server Reporting Services" have introduced a bug that causes ProgressTracker to ignore changes to the CRI color and border style whent the reoprt is rendered. To fix:

1. Open the ProgressTrackerRenderer.cs (or ProgressTrackerRenderer.vb if you use the VB.NET version)
2. Locate the Initialize() function and make the following code changes:

//_progress.ProgressColor = Shared.GetColorFromString(LookupCustomProperty(_cri.CustomProperties, Shared.PROP_PROGRESS_COLOR, Drawing.Color.Salmon.Name));

//_progress.BorderColor = Shared.GetColorFromString(LookupCustomProperty(_cri.CustomProperties, Shared.PROP_PROGRESS_COLOR, Drawing.Color.Gray.Name));

_progress.ProgressColor = Shared.GetColorFromString(_cri.Style["Color"].ToString());

_progress.BorderColor = Shared.GetColorFromString(_cri.Style["BorderColor"].ToString());

   3. Close the Reports project (if it is open) and rebuild the ProgressTrackerCRI project to deploy the code changes.

The net result of making these changes will be that the CRI will reuse the Color and BorderColor standard RS properties instead of trying to find corresponding custom properties in RDL. Thanks to Sorin Sandu for reporting this.