Book Image

Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 Reporting

By : Damian Hernan Sinay
Book Image

Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 Reporting

By: Damian Hernan Sinay

Overview of this book

All of the data entered into a CRM means nothing if it is unable to report the important information to our managers and executives in such a way that they can easily and quickly get the results they need. A better reporting system would enable them to make the necessary improvements to the processes that any business needs in a dynamic business world.For users and developers wishing to take advantage of using the report capabilities of Dynamics CRM, this is the book for you. Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 Reporting is a practical and excellent reference guide that provides you with a number of different options you can use to create and empower the Reporting capabilities of Dynamics CRM. This will give you a good grounding in using the reports in your Dynamics CRM 2011 implementations. This book looks at all the different options we can use to create reports in Dynamics CRM 2011, starting with SQL Reporting Services and custom reports, created in either CRM Report Wizard, SQL Report Builder, or Visual Studio. It will also show other options we can use such as dashboards, charts, and different ways to optimize and automate reports.We will also learn how to build our own reports either using the different wizards for basic reports or using Visual Studio for more complex reports. We will explore the options mobile CRM users have who want to run and see reports on these mobile devices.
Table of Contents (18 chapters)
Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 Reporting
Credits
About the Author
About the Reviewers
www.PacktPub.com
Preface
Index

Datasets


There are two types of datasets: shared and embedded. To create a shared dataset, we will need to have access to SQL Reporting Services, as the shared dataset will be stored there to be accessible for future reports. If we don't have access to the SQL Server Reporting Services, we can skip this step and create an embedded dataset that will be embedded within our report (RDL file).

To create a new shared dataset, follow the ensuing steps:

  1. Click on New Dataset.

  2. Click on the Browse other data sources link and find the MSCRM_DataSource data source for our organization; it will usually be located in a folder with our organization name plus the _MSCRM suffix, for example, CRMORG_MSCRM. These are shared data sources that were created by the CRM Setup application when the CRM was initially deployed.

    Note

    If we are using the standalone version of Report Builder, we won't be able to create or browse shared data sources.

    There are also two main types of data sources: embedded and shared. The shared...