ChristianSteven BI Blog

 Accessing information about how your company is faring through multiple perspectives can be daunting. SQL Server Reporting Services (SSRS) allows your company to view data that improves your Business Intelligence.  Unfortunately, most of the licenses are expensive and narrow in scope. Even worse, they give you an ‘SSRS data driven subscription not available’ notice. Our SSRS Data Driven Subscription software, SQL-RD, allows you to use this feature even on a SQL Server Standard Edition license.

SQL Server’s SSRS is a powerful report generation and deployment engine. With all its power, SQL Server Reporting Services has a built-in scheduling and automation tool where administrators can schedule SSRS reports subscriptions. If that is the case, then why on earth would an admin want to rely on an external or dedicated report scheduler? 

Not only is PBRS a handy tool for scheduling SQL Server Reports, it can be a great way to manage SSRS report subscriptions. Many PBRS users have enjoyed the ability to schedule SSRS reports with expanded options such as report encryption, additional formats, and more destinations such as SharePoint & Dropbox. In addition to the advanced subscription distribution features PBRS has to offer, it can also act as an SSRS report manager. Let’s look at three ways PBRS can help SQL Server admins manage their SSRS subscriptions.

Depending on your SQL Server edition, SSRS has some built-in scheduling functions that allow administrators to schedule SSRS reports to email. Many situations require reporting administrators to turn to PBRS, an “out of system” workflow tool for scheduled SSRS reports. In the past, I have discussed in great detail the reasons why administrators use PBRS to schedule reports, but now I will cover how administrators schedule SSRS reports to email.

Imagine that the management team needs to receive 10 weekly status reports that include finances, inventory, sales etc. As usual, you have 10 subscriptions setup that deliver these reports. Everything is working just fine, then suddenly management decides that they no longer want to fuss with 10 different reports and 10 different emails. Instead, they want one document that encompasses all the weekly information they need. Great, now you have to write a whole new report, deploy it, and then set up the subscriptions all over again. Or do you? Using PBRS's Package Schedule, you can merge SSRS report output into a single PDF, text, or Excel file without the need to change the reports.