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Jim “Sourdough Master” Steger sent us a fresh reminder that, despite all the advantages of CRM Online deployments, on premise installations have a few aces up their sleeves when it comes to reporting, and here is one of them:
Don’t forget about the ability to schedule SQL Server Reporting Services (SSRS) reports when using CRM on premise. This is a great way to do automated alerts across multiple records or more complex results without having to rely on a custom solution. Create a report in Dynamics, then publish for external use. Then go into SSRS and create a dynamic data subscription to the appropriate users.
How to come into ssrs?
SSRS stands for SQL Server Reporting Services. Depending on your installation it can be found alongside with your main SQL Server or on a separate server. Latter would give you better performance and scalability but requires additional SQL license. It only applies to on premises installations, naturally
We had challenges doing this through the prescribed method, so I have been creating reports in VS, then uploading to SSRS, and then having our IT team add a stored credential. I then add the subscription.
Interesting that the process described in this post makes no mention of the Schedule Report button in the CRM Report ribbon (FYI.. we are still on CRM 2011 and on-premise).