Creating a custom report in CRM 2011 by BIDS

Hi,

Long time no post on my blog. Actually, sometimes I wonder whether I should continue this blog anymore or not... No one really care to this one... :D

Anws, still on my way study everything about CRM: javascript, plug-in, silverlight, BI, reporting... A lot of things.. And till now I'm quite happy with what I studied. At least I began knowing what can do with CRM, and how to do that,etc. which are good when you meet the customers :D.

Today, regarding a demand from people on Microsoft CRM forum for knowing how to create a custom report in CRM. Then I decided to wirte this blog to describe step by step how to achieve this purpose.

Firstly, you need to have the following things in order to create and deployed a report successfully in CRM:
- Business Intelligence Development Studio (BIDS) which run on Visual Studio platform.
- Ensure that your CRM includes Microsoft Dynamics CRM Reporting Extensions.
- Your CRM reporting server URL (which you define when setting up CRM system)

Here is step by step:

- Step 1: Open your BIDS. Remember that BIDS run in VS environment, then you will see the VS screen openned up.

- Step 2: Creating a new Reporting project

- Step 3: In Solution Explorer --> Right Click Report --> Create new report --> you will see the Report Wizrad pop up

- Step 4: Creating a Data Source for your report. Data Source is like a link which connects your report to the database storing your data. In order to define a Data Source, you need to know your Database Server and Database Name:

-Step 5: After defining the Data Source, clicking Next --> Query Builder window will pop up. Here is the place that you build queries to retrieve your data.

-Step 6: Click Query Builder --> Click Add Table icon --> Choose all tables that you need (in this example, I chose Account Table )

 
- Step 7: After adding tables, selecting fields that you want to view in the report. You will see the equivalent query to your select below.

- Step 8: Click Next until the end of the dialog and put name of report inside. Now you have a report interface like that:

The left hand-side is all things included in your report. You could see "Name","Address".. fields in the report content.

- Step 9: Now, if you want to add some more parameters to filter your report result. You could go to "Parameter"  --> Add New

- Put available values for the parameter. Here I would like to put the "Account Name" field

- Step 10:  Now the report is nearly done. Then you "Build" the report.
                 After that, need to Deploy the report into your CRM Reporting Server. To do so, open Properties, add "TargetReportServer" by your Reporting Server URL:

- Step 11: Go to your CRM --> Workplace --> Report --> Add new report --> Add existing report --> put the "RDL" file in your report project into the CRM

- Step 12: Testing your report by opening it ! Here you will see the filter condition which is "Account Name" we created before and the result when running report.

Please feel free leave your comment if you dont understand any step. :D. And Please comment a bit if you find this blog is useful :P. Many thanksssss