Reporting Services Automation

Automating SSRS Post-Publishing Tasks: Best Practices to Maintain User Settings

Deploying reports in SQL Server Reporting Services (SSRS) can often be a challenging task, especially when it comes to managing user access and visibility of reports. Many professionals in the field adopt unique strategies for publishing and archiving reports, aiming to streamline their workflow. However, a common issue arises: how do you ensure that users associated with reports remain intact, and that you don’t inadvertently hide reports when making updates? This blog post aims to tackle this problem by providing a comprehensive guide on automating post-publishing tasks within SSRS.

The Challenge: Maintaining User Access After Publishing

When you publish updated reports or archive them as part of your management strategy, you might find that:

  • Users associated with each report are lost.
  • Reports are hidden, requiring additional manual adjustments.

This can lead to confusion and frustration, especially in larger teams where multiple individuals rely on consistent access to reports.

Solution Overview: Automating Post-Publishing Tasks

Fortunately, there are methods you can use to automate these repetitive tasks, ensuring that user accessibility is maintained after deploying your reports from Visual Studio. Below, we outline effective strategies to streamline these processes.

1. Explore Reporting Services Automation

One of the first steps towards automation is to leverage existing resources that provide examples and scripts specifically designed for SSRS automation. Paul Stovell has shared some valuable insights and automation examples on his blog, which can serve as a foundation for your automation efforts.

These resources give you a detailed look into existing scripts that can help automate tasks such as hiding reports and managing user permissions.

2. Use SSRS APIs for Automation

SSRS provides robust APIs that can be utilized for automating post-publishing tasks. Here’s how you can proceed:

  • Identify the appropriate API endpoints for user management and report visibility.
  • Create scripts to execute after each deployment which can:
    • Reassign users to reports.
    • Manage visibility/status of reports (e.g., hide/unhide).
  • Schedule these scripts to run automatically through task scheduling tools available on your system, ensuring they execute as soon as your reports are published.

3. Consider Using PowerShell

PowerShell scripts can be incredibly powerful for automating SSRS tasks. You can use it to:

  • Connect to the SSRS web service.
  • Execute batch operations for setting user permissions and report visibility.
  • Monitor the status of reports after deployments to flag any issues automatically.

Here’s a simple outline of how a PowerShell script might look:

# Connect to SSRS web service
$ssrs = New-WebServiceProxy -Uri "http://<your-report-server>/reportserver/ReportService2005.asmx?wsdl"
# Command to hide or show reports
$ssrs.SetPolicies(...)
# Code to reassign users

Conclusion: Streamlining Your SSRS Management

By adopting these automation strategies, you can significantly reduce the manual effort required to manage your SSRS reports effectively. Whether through leveraging existing examples, utilizing APIs, or custom scripts, maintaining user settings post-publishing can become a seamless process.

Final Thoughts

As with any automation process, thorough testing is crucial to ensure that everything operates smoothly. By integrating these best practices into your workflow, you’ll not only save time but also enhance your team’s reporting experience.

If you have more questions or would like to share your own experiences with SSRS automation, feel free to leave a comment below!