Category Archives: SSRS

SSRS – Repeat Header Rows On Each Page – Not Working

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I was facing a weird issue on SSRS (SQL Server Reporting Services) wherein each page of my report was setup to show Header Row, but was actually not.

I had an SSRS table (Tablix) which was setup to repeat header rows on each page of my SSRS report. This option must be setup as shown below:

 

Despite setting up as shown above, it was not repeating the header row on all pages, except the first one.

Upon digging more on this, I got to visit a blog named Business Intelligence Chronicles by Christo Olivier. The post which saved (taught) me on how to overcome this issue is: Header Row Does Not Repeat On Subsequent Pages.

It’s very informative and crystal clear in terms of how it explained the steps to follow.

VAIDY

SQL Server 2012 Reporting Services on Safari & Chrome Browsers

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This is a very painful issue that took my entire time and effort in solving it.

I am not sure how many of you know that SQL Server 2012 Reporting Services doesn’t support Safari and Chrome browsers (in fact, it’s only partially supported). But it’s high time, you know it. There is a browser support page on Microsoft website, that can be seen here: Planning for Browser Support.

I recently upgraded our SQL Server to 2012 and all my SSRS reports were working till last week. All of a sudden, my reports started showing up nothing other than the report header and parameters section on Google Chrome and Apple Safari browsers. Since the management team is fully on Apple technologies (Mac OS and Safari browser), it was just critical that these reports stopped working.

Stack Overflow forum has got this gem of an article, which helped me in fixing this issue: SSRS 2008 R2 reports are blank in Safari and Chrome.

The original question was for SQL Server 2008 R2, but the solution works for SQL Server 2012 as well.

I am sure, some of you would face this issue in future, as more and more clients are moving toward different technologies other than Microsoft for day-to-day IT requirements, such as Linux, Mac, mobile OSes (iOS, Android, WP, etc.), but would still want all their BI solutions work as it would on native technology base (in this case, Microsoft).

VAIDY

Fiscal Year Start Date & End Date – SQL Query

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I am currently working on custom SSRS dashboards performance tuning and related exercises. One task among all is to automate the Fiscal Year Start Date and Fiscal Year End Date based on which Fiscal Year we are in.

If the fiscal year is the same as calendar year, we can hard code the values to 1-Jan-[current year] and 31-Dec-[current year]. Since it’s not in my case, I had to dynamically get the dates from somewhere.

The simplest way for me is to query this from GP Fiscal Periods Setup table, which is SY40101.

Following is the query, if anyone would like to know how the dates are retrieved:

SELECT FSTFSCDY Fiscal_Start_Date,

LSTFSCDY Fiscal_End_Date

FROM SY40101 

WHERE YEAR1 = CASE WHEN MONTH(GETDATE()) >= [first month of your company fiscal year] THEN YEAR(GETDATE()) ELSE YEAR(GETDATE()) – 1 END

With above, I can now be rest assured that by the time a new fiscal year is started, my dashboards would automatically get refreshed with new start & end dates.

This query would also work if the fiscal year is as good as the calendar year.

VAIDY

Complete list of Microsoft Dynamics GP 2010 R2 SSRS Reports

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Inside Microsoft Dynamics GP has listed out all SSRS reports for Microsoft Dynamics GP 2010 R2.

The list categorizes reports by module and indicates whether it’s a normal report or KPI based report. This would be the best document to make us aware of and convince our customers that GP does have such expansive list of standard reports and KPIs.

VAIDY

Microsoft Dynamics GP 2010 – Reporting (By David Duncan & Christopher Liley)

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I just added one more treasure on my kit, in the form of a new book called Microsoft Dynamics GP 2010 – Reporting, written by David Duncan (I.B.I.S.) and Christopher Liley (I.B.I.S.), published by Packt Publishing.

I have started reading this book from today and hopefully in a week, I will be able to grab hold of the vast set of chapters.

To give you an overview of what is there inside this book: The book covers everything “reporting” in GP. From Report Writer reports to Smartlist to Excel Reports to SSRS to Analysis Cubes to Management Reporter. Every single thing about GP Reporting.

However, the book does not talk about two things:

1. Crystal Reports and the way you can access crystal reports from GP quite understandably because Crystal Reports is NOT supported out of the box by Dynamics GP. It can be used with the help some 3rd Party solutions, such as GP Report Viewer (from Flexible Solutions) or even a simple code piece written by any Consultant who knows GP, Crystal Reporting and .NET coding.

2. FRx, as this is already been replaced by Management Reporter. There is of course a section in this book where the difference between FRx and Management Reporter is explained.

I shall be writing a review of this book in a week’s time (hopefully). Just could not wait to tell you all that this book really going to be a great treasure for those who wants to understand how effectively GP data can be visualized and analyzed.

Until next post.

VAIDY

Microsoft Dynamics GP2010 R2 – SSRS BI maxRequestLength Error

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Another one, luckily Mohammad R. Daoud has got an answer to this issue.

Once GP2010 R2 installation is over and GP Utilities start configuring system, almost the last setup is SRS Reports Deployment wizard. It’s a welcome change from previous versions, as this one is more explanatory and clear.

Once it starts deploying reports, the following error message is thrown:

The message is self-explanatory on what needs to be done to get rid of this message. To understand how to find WEB.CONFIG file, read Mohammad R. Daoud’s post; Dynamics GP 2010 R2 Business Intelligence Installation Error maxRequestLength.
Thanks Daoud. It was really helpful.
VAIDY

Microsoft Dynamics GP 2010 R2 – SRS Reports Deployment Error

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Everyone knows that GP2010 R2 got released well before it’s announced date (1st May 2011). And I was no exception in starting off with it.

I installed GP 2010 R2 on my laptop and it went thru’ merrily. And started off with deploying SSRS and Excel Reports. Below is the error message I am getting:

Reason: I am running SQL Server 2008 R2 Express. For some reason, SRS deployment do not recognize SQL Server Express editions and it requires either Standard or Enterprise.
So people, those who would wish to deploy SRS on SQL Server 2008 R2 Express, please do not.
VAIDY

List of Attractive BI Technologies from Microsoft

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This was my second session today at Tech-Ed 2011 Middle East. Very interesting and demos were extremely useful to understand all the BI Technologies listed.

Now what exactly are we talking about? The session was all about listing the most promising (some are already existing) BI Tools running on top of either OR all of the following: SQL Server 2008 R2, SharePoint 2010, Silverlight.

The following are the list:


  1. SharePoint Excel Services
  2. PowerPivot Galleries
  3. PerformancePoint (Dashboards, Scorecards & KPIs)
  4. PowerPivot for SharePoint
  5. Pivot Tool – based on Silverlight
  6. Bing Data Connector – To show geospatial data
  7. SQL Server 2008 R2 Reporting Services (Report Builder)


Each of them will take it’s own time to allow user to understand the basics. I let my readers to BING or GOOGLE these terminologies and learn it.

But, the above list is what Microsoft concentrates more on currently to let users create the most attractive BI for them.

Enjoy.

VAIDY

Project Crescent – Beyond SSRS Reporting Tool

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I must be following SQL Server Reporting Services Team Blog for loads of information and all that “What’s Coming Up?”.

Attending an evening session in Tech-Ed 2011 Middle East, and this is what I got to know which had been in fact announced some months back.

For those, who do not know about this (like me till this moment), this is the information. Project Crescent is a project currently on progress inside MSFT, which targets every kind of user, be it IT Developer or Corporate Power User or a No-Nonsense End-User) to visualize their Business Data; however they want it to be.

More information here: A Glimpse at Project Crescent.

VAIDY

Microsoft Dynamics GP 2010 R2 – 50+ New SSRS Reports

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Yeah, we heard it right. We are going to have 50+ new SSRS Reports.

Inside Microsoft Dynamics GP excites us with this post: Feature of the Day: New SQL Reporting Services Reports.

I am more interested in knowing Field Service Reports, since that’s where GP lacks a bit in terms of realtime reporting. I sincerely hope R2 fills that gap to most extent. Of course, requirements from different customers would always be different.

VAIDY