Management Reporter - Scheduling Reports Act II

Sometime back I requested the ability to schedule reports from PPS Management Reporter, a feature that was missing from V1. I put together a quick spec for Microsoft of what would pacify us until they put a proper full scheduler into future releases. This is what I requested as a minimum:

The command – ManagementReporter.exe

Flags/Parameters

-Generate (action to be done)
-Connection:DefaultConnection (connection created to the MR database.)
-Logon:”Mr Price Group” (The entity that you wish to log into)
-BuildingBlockGroup:Default (building block within logged on install that you wish to use)
-Report: “\Mr Price\SSMP1 Income Statement with PMO Monthly” (The report name and the subdirectory stored in)
-Output:”Management Reporter” (Could be “Management Reporter” or “Reporting Definition Language” or “Printer”

So what did we get? In short we get to use the same ReportGenerator.exe that is in the program files directory. We also get 3 of the 6 switches/parameters requested. These are:

-Generate
-BuildingBlockGroup
-Report

The report flag does not however require any sub directory as although the reports are stored in directories they MUST be unique in name.

Here is an example of the command syntax.

ReportDesigner.exe -Generate -BuildingBlockGroup:Default -Report:"SSAS4 Expenses Actual vs Budget Monthly"

We are extremely grateful for what we have received but it does come with some prerequisites as the Report Designer is actually opened and then closed once the report has completed.

1. Remember to tick the "save my credentials" box on the logon screen for Report Designer on the machine that you are going to run the scheduled reports. Also make sure that the appropriate default connection and entity are selected. The scheduled reports will use these credentials, connection and entity.
2. Any reports run should not have "Select units at run time" ticked on the Settings Tab under "Reporting unit selection".
3. You can only output to Management Reporter and not to file or RDL. Even if you select these they report will only be sent to the Report Viewer.
4. You cannot run more than one report at a time. If one report is running any subsequent attempt will realize that the Report Designer is already open and report a success message even though it has done nothing.

A list of error messages that you can encounter are:

0=Success
1=UnknownBuildingBlockGroup
2=UnknownReport
3=ReportViewerExportError
4=ReportFailedToLoad
5=ReportAlreadyGenerating
6=ReportingServicesGenerateError
7=UseRowDefinitionFromTree
8=ReportDesignerBadRepositoryPermissions
9=UnknownRepositoryError
10=FailedToConnectToReportingServices
11=BeforeGenerateValidationError
12=AcceptSecurityWarningError
13=ValidateDataError
14=BuildingBlocksNotValidated
15=UnableToCreateTree
16=CompanyCredentials
17=EnsureCompleteCompanyCredentialsFailed
18=EngineException
19=FailedToOpenReport
255=UnknownError

Reports can be run from the command line, task scheduler and from SQL Server Agent. Although this is not comparable to the Frx Reporter Scheduling it is a step in the right direction.

- Paul Steynberg