Hi All
I'm looking to do a job for one of our CRM users. They print out a simple 'daily worksheet', which is a CRM report filtered to find open cases assigned to a user. What I want to do is edit the report so that under each item in the report (cases), there is a blank text field for hand written notes.
I can add another column for notes but then the length of the report is more than a landscape A4 page. My development skills are basic but I have managed to download the report as an .rdl file and open it in Visual Studio. After that, I'm stuck. Any advice is appreciated.
Kind Regards.
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When you click inside the grid, you'll see a header above the table (sort of like the header above Excel columns). Right-click on the header and choose Insert Column and then Left or Right depending on where you want the new column to be inserted. See image.
Insert a column in a CRM SQL Server report
The application is Visual Studio (Business Intelligence Design Studio - what I think you have been working in). The screen grab is a result of exporting the .rdl file from CRM, importing it into a Visual Studio BIDS project and editing it. Some of the customizations that you see are newly available in SQL 2008 only (such as the gauge). The report was originally part of the Analytics Solution Accelerator, distributed for free by Microsoft via www.codeplex.com.
But the area that you're interested in is the grid that reads "Top 10 Key Deals" - this is probably formatted in a similar manner to the report you are trying to edit. I clicked inside of the grid to reveal the headers above and to the left of the grid. I think right-clicked the column header that I wanted to insert next to which brought up the pop-up menu.
Thanks CRM_info
I downloaded CRM report builder 2.0. That lets me do everything I need. However when I try to import the .rdl file back into CRM, I get this error message; 'The report definition has an invalid namespace'. I have googled this and it seems that if the file is opened in Report Builder 2.0 it is formatted in SQL 2008 fomat which then isn't compatible with the version of SQL in my CRM installation. Have you come across this issue before.
Thanks for all the help.
I have found the solution to the last issue is to export a report from CRM, alter it in Visual Studio as needed, then deploy it to Reporting Services. Instead of trying to bring the .rdl file back in to CRM by browsing for 'existing file', you use 'link to webpage' and paste in the URL of the report as it appears in Reporting Services.
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by: crm_infoPosted on 2009-05-26 at 05:42:05ID: 24472529
Without seeing the specifics of your report, this is a tough one to answer. But here are a few suggestions, top-of-head:
* Add another column. Sounds like you tried this, but it didn't work well. You can consider resizing the remaining columns (possibly changing font sizes too) to get the job done.
* Add another row. I'm assuming that your report is displaying in a grid. You can right-click on the row that contains the data and add another row. At that point, you can just leave the row blank, or you can edit the borders of the row to make it clear that it is a box for writing notes.
* Expand the existing row. You should be able to drag the row to make it taller. You can then "top align" all the text to open up space at the bottom of the row for note taking.
* Use the Report Wizard. You can create a new, custom, report using the Report Wizard. It's not nearly as flexible as using Visual Studio, but it may give you what you need or at least provide a starting point that you can modify.
NOTE: If you're updating one of the existing CRM reports, then make sure you're editing the correct report. Many reports contain sub-reports that contain the data that you will need to update.