About Reports

Overview

The Reports area in NetForum is used to configure the name, location, parameters and other information about a report so that users can launch the report in NetForum.

Managing Data

Reports are managed from the Admin module and Reports group item.

 

Report Name: Name of Report from specs

Report Description: Description of the report. Typically the description will be longer and more detailed than the Report Name

Separate Pages: This setting is specific to Crystal Reports and has no functionality for Reporting Services.

Page to Tree Ratio: This setting is specific to Crystal Reports and has no functionality for Reporting Services.

Report Object: choose the Object associated with this report. If your report parameters use any parsed values that are defaulted (see Report Parameters for more information on this), then these parsed values must exist as controls of that object. If in doubt as to whether that control exists, navigate to the object in the Toolkit module, and click list controls for this object to see which controls belong to that object.

Override SQL: This setting is specific to Crystal Reports and has no functionality for Reporting Services.

External Report: This setting is specific to Crystal Reports and has no functionality for Reporting Services.

Has parameters: check this if the report has report parameters (which it almost always will).

Ignore Store Images?: As mentioned in Reporting Services Report Manager Configuration, this setting controls whether the report should ignore the header and footer images stored in the Report Manager folder designated for the storage of such images. If you wish for the report to display no images, or you have designed the RDL with an image that is specific to that report, then this setting should be turned on.

If you turn this setting off, netFORUM will try to replace the first image object found in the page header and page footer sections of the RDL with the images designated by the ReportApplicationRSHeaderImagePath and ReportApplicationRSFooterImagePath system options.

RDL Path: This is the path of where the Reporting Services RDL is stored. This is offset from the Report Manager folder designated as the root folder for this site in the RSRootClientReportFolder system option.

RDL File Name: The name of the RDL file that is deployed to the Reporting Services server.

Data Driven Subscription: This is a new setting in netFORUM 3.0.1. A data driven subscription will allow a report to be run multiple times and sent to individual recipients. See below for additional setup requirements.

Data Driven Subscription

This feature is new with netFORUM 3.0.1 and requires SQL 2008 R2 Enterprise

A data driven subscription will send individual reports based on the report setup. Each subscription should be configured as a separate report record in netFORUM.

Example: Invoices by Batch Report can be filtered by individual and each individual's invoice can be e-mailed to them.

If you check the Data Driven Subscription flag, you will get additional fields that will need to be populated on the Add - Report form.

 

Subscription Query: This will define a query that will filter the report into smaller individual report that can be sent. Data that is contained within curly braces will be populated from report parameters. The parameter name should have the same value as what is in the braces. In the screen shot above, the report would have a parameter named @bat_key which will populate {@bat_key} in the query. The query will need to return an e-mail address. This is used to determine where to send the individual reports. This can be a static e-mail or driven by data.

Map Email To: This is the e-mail address field from the subscription query.

Map Email CC: This is also mapped from the subscription query. This is an e-mail address that will be CC'd on the report. If this is not mapped, the user will have the option to choose a static value at run-time.

Map Reply-to: This can be mapped from the subscription query if a different reply to other than the user's e-mail is required. If this is not mapped, the user will have the option to choose a static value at run-time.

Map Email Subject: The subject of the e-mail can also be mapped from the subscription query. If this is not mapped, the user will have the option to choose a static value at run-time.

Report Parameter Mapping

If the report SP has parameters that need to be passed, these will need to be mapped from the subscription query. In the example above of an Invoices by Batch Report, the user would be entering a batch key. This batch key would be passed into the subscription query. Since the report is actually running individual invoices and e-mailing them to the individuals, the report SP would not require a batch key. It would most likely require an invoice key (this could also be set up with a customer key if you wanted to group the report by customer and send one file per customer instead of one per invoice).

To set up the parameters that will be passed to the report SP, there is an additional mapping that is required. This is done in the Report Parameter Mapping child form. Beginning with Service Pack 2009.01.01, instructions on completing the fields are included in the Instructions drop-down.

 

Report Parameter: This is the name of the parameter in the report SP.

Map To Column: This is the name of the column from the subscription query.

Requirements

This is a standard feature in NetForum, but it will only work if the Reports Server is on the correct edition. Per MSDN, this feature is only available on the Developer, Evaluation, and Enterprise editions of Reporting Services. Also, if the Reports Server is a different server from the SQL server, the license for the SQL server may also need to be upgraded.

Notes

The results of the report execution will always be sent as a PDF attachment to an email.

The text of the email body can be set in the Comments field when creating the Data Driven Subscription.