Note: Microsoft SQL Server Reporting Services and Parallels RAS Reporting must be installed and configured before you can perform any of the tasks described here and later in this chapter. For complete installation instructions, please see Install Parallels RAS Reporting.
Before you create custom reports, you need to enable the Custom Reports functionality in the RAS Console. Initially, this will perform one important action, it will create a virtual folder on the SQL Server Reporting Services side for storing your custom reports and will display it in the RAS Console together with the predefined folders.
To enable custom reports:
In the RAS Console, navigate to Administration > Reporting.
Make sure that the Enable RAS Reporting option is enabled.
Click the Advanced settings button.
In the dialog that opens, select the Enable custom reports option (at the bottom) and specify a folder name, or use the default name "Custom reports". The folder will appear on the Reports list in the Reporting category.
Click OK and then click the Apply button in the RAS Console.
The virtual folder for storing custom reports will be created on the SQL Server Reporting Services side. To view it in the RAS Console, select the Reporting category and click the "Refresh" icon. If you see individual reports (not folders) click the "Folders" icon at the top of the Reports pane. The "Custom reports" folder will appear in the list. By default, the folder contains a single sample report.
To view the "Custom reports" virtual folder in the SQL Server Report Manager, open the following URL in a web browser:
http://[server-name]:8085/Reports_RASREPORTING
where [server-name] is the name or IP address of the server where you have the SQL Server instance installed. The "RASREPORTING" part is the SQL Server instance name. If you used a different name when you installed the instance, use that name instead of "RASREPORTING".
The SQL Server Report Manager allows you to view and manage virtual folders and reports that they contain. You can download or upload reports as files to/from your local file system, set a report data source, and perform some other tasks. We will talk about some of these tasks later in this chapter.