Management Reporter Report Scheduling

Earlier this week, I received my regular GPUG Community Update email, and it contained the following poll results:



Really?  Only 17.4% picked Management Reporter?  As I was prepping a presentation on MR Report Distribution for the GPUG Special Interest Group (SIG) on BI and Reporting, I kept coming across more and more features in MR 2012 (UR 4) that are exciting not just because they exist but because they are so easy to use.  I mean, I come from the wayback days of FRx Report Server and WebPort, and all the hours and hours and hours (and hours) of fun that came with wanting to deliver reports easily to end users.  So, at least for me, MR is a breathe of fresh air as Microsoft continues to add improvement after improvement in the incremental releases.

Of course, I am a realist, and I know that there are issues that remain and will continue to be addressed and discussed.  But I am an optimist as well, and wanted to share a little on just how easy it is to schedule the automatic generation of reports in Management Reporter 2012.

First, we navigate to Report Schedules in Management Reporter.

Then we click "New" to start a new schedule.

Note that you can include a single report, or a report group in the schedule.  You can have a variety of different schedules based on your needs.  Click the permissions button to supply the credentials to be used to generate the report.  If your report or report group includes data from multiple companies, ensure that the proper credentials are supplied for all companies.

Then, in the frequency section,  specify the constraints of the schedule.

Set the start, pattern, and range of the recurrence.  Then when you save the schedule (either by clicking the Save icon or by closing the Schedule window), you will be prompted to give the schedule a name.

The reports will then generate automatically (based on their output selections to the Reports Library and secure report links) based on the schedule.  Very easy in my book :)

Christina Phillips is a Microsoft Certified Trainer and Dynamics GP Certified Professional. She is a supervising consultant with BKD Technologies, providing training, support, and project management services to new and existing Microsoft Dynamics customers. This blog represents her views only, not those of her employer.