Reports for the Masses from System Center 2012 Configuration Manager

System Center 2012 R2 Configuration Manager uses SQL Server Reporting Services for reporting purposes. The reports that are available can answer questions that people in your organization may have.

Administrators have access to the reports from the SCCM Administration Console, but what about the rest of us? For that we can rely on both subscriptions and the Report Manager website. For this blog, we’ll focus on the subscriptions.

A subscription is nothing more than a standing order to run a report and return its results to a particular destination. The report may be emailed to a user or group of users. It can also be placed in a shared folder.

Report Delivered by Email

When you create a report subscription to deliver a report by email, an email with the report included as an attachment is sent to the email addresses. You elect to send either a notification with a hyperlink to the generated report or to send an embedded or attached report based on the capabilities of the browser-most will be attachments.

To create a report subscription to deliver a report by email

1. In the Configuration Manager console, click Monitoring.

2. In the Monitoring workspace, expand Reporting and click Reports to list the available reports. You can select a report folder to list the only the reports that are associated with the folder. 

3.Select the report that you want to add to the subscription, and then on the Home tab, in the Report Group section, click Create Subscription to open the Create Subscription Wizard. 

4.  On the Subscription Delivery page, configure the following settings:

• Report delivered by: Select E-mail to deliver the report as an attachment in an email message.
• To: Specify a valid email address to send this report to.
• Cc: Optionally, specify an email address to copy this report to.
• Bcc: Optionally, specify an email address to send a blind copy of this report to.
• Reply To: Specify the reply address to use if the recipient replies to the email message.
• Subject: Specify a subject line for the subscription email message.
• Priority: Select the priority flag for this email message. Select Low, Normal, or High. The priority setting is used by Microsoft Exchange to set a flag indicating the importance of the email message.
• Comment: Specify text to be added to the body of the subscription email message.
• Description: Specify the description for this report subscription.
• Include Link: Includes a URL to the subscribed report in the body of the email message.
• Include Report: Specify that the report is attached to the e-mail message. The format in which the report will be attached is specified in the Render Format list.
• Render Format: Select one of the following formats for the attached report:
  • XML file with report data: Saves the report in Extensible Markup Language format.
  • CSV (comma delimited): Saves the report in comma-separated-value format.
  • TIFF file: Saves the report in Tagged Image File Format.
  • Acrobat (PDF) file: Saves the report in Acrobat Portable Document Format.
  • MHTML (web archive): Saves the report in MIME HTML format (mhtml), which is viewable in many web browsers.
  • Excel: Saves the report as a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet.
  • Word: Saves the report as a Microsoft Word document

5. On the Subscription Schedule page, select one of the following delivery schedule options for the report subscription:

• Use shared schedule: A shared schedule is a previously defined schedule that can be used by other report subscriptions. Select this check box, and then select a shared schedule in the list if any have been specified.
• Create new schedule: Configure the schedule on which this report will run, including the interval, start time and date, and the end date for this subscription.

6.  On the Subscription Parameters page, specify the parameters for this report that are used when it is run unattended. When there are no parameters for the report, this page is not displayed.

7.  On the Summary page, review the report subscription settings. Click Previous to change the settings or click Next to create the report subscription. 

8.  On the Completion page, click Close to exit the wizard. Verify that the report subscription was created successfully. You can view and modify report subscriptions in the Subscriptions node under Reporting in the Monitoring workspace.

Report delivered to a file share

When you create a report subscription to deliver a report to a file share, the report is copied in the specified report format to the file share that you specify which must be an existing folder. The folder that you specify must be accessible over a network connection. When you specify the destination folder in a subscription, use a UNC path and do not include trailing backslashes in the folder path. For example, a valid UNC path for the destination folder is: \\Server2\Reports\EquipmentReports.

Reports can be rendered in a variety of file formats, such as MHTML or Excel. To save the report in a specific file format, select that rendering format when creating your subscription.

To create a report subscription to deliver a report to a file share.

1. In the Configuration Manager console, click Monitoring.

2. In the Monitoring workspace, expand Reporting and click Reports to list the available reports. You can select a report folder to list only the reports that are associated with the folder.

3.Select the report that you want to add to the subscription, and then on the Home tab, in the Report Group section, click Create Subscription to open the Create Subscription Wizard. 

4. On the Subscription Delivery page, configure the following settings:

• Report delivered by: Select Windows File Share to deliver the report to a file share.
• File Name: Specify the file name for the report. By default, the report file does not include a file name extension. Select Add file extension when created to automatically add a file name extension to this report based on the render format.
• Path: Specify a UNC path to an existing folder where you want to deliver this report (for example, \\<server name>\<server share>\<report folder>).
• Render Format: Select one of the following formats for the report file:
  • XML file with report data: Saves the report in Extensible Markup Language format.
  • CSV (comma delimited): Saves the report in comma-separated-value format.
  • TIFF file: Saves the report in Tagged Image File Format.
  • Acrobat (PDF) file: Saves the report in Acrobat Portable Document Format.
  • HTML 4.0: Saves the report as a webpage viewable only in browsers that support HTML 4.0. Internet Explorer 5 and later versions support HTML 4.0.
  • MHTML (web archive): Saves the report in MIME HTML format (mhtml), which is viewable in many web browsers.
  • RPL Renderer: Saves the report in Report Page Layout (RPL) format.
  • Excel: Saves the report as a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet.
  • Word: Saves the report as a Microsoft Word document.
• User Name: Specify a Windows user account with permissions to access the destination server share and folder. The user account must have access to this server share and have Write permission on the destination folder.
• Password: Specify the password for the Windows user account. In Confirm Password, re-enter the password.
• Select one of the following options to configure the behavior when a file of the same name exists in the destination folder:
  • Overwrite an existing file with a newer version: Specifies that when the report file already exists, the new version overwrites it.
  • Do not overwrite an existing file: Specifies that when the report file already exists, there is no action.
  • Increment file names as newer versions are added: Specifies that when the report file already exists, a number is added to the new report to the file name to distinguish it from other versions.
• Description: Specifies the description for the report subscription.

  Click Next.

• On the Subscription Schedule page, select one of the following delivery schedule options for the report subscription:

• Use shared schedule: A shared schedule is a previously defined schedule that can be used by other report subscriptions. Select this check box, and then select a shared schedule in the list if any have been specified.
• Create new schedule: Configure the schedule on which this report runs, including the interval, start time and date, and the end date for this subscription.

6. On the Subscription Parameters page, specify the parameters for this report that are used when it is run unattended. When there are no parameters for the report, this page is not displayed.

7.  On the Summary page, review the report subscription settings. Click Previous to change the settings or click Next to create the report subscription. 

8. On the Completion page, click Close to exit the wizard. Verify that the report subscription was created successfully. You can view and modify report subscriptions in the Subscriptions node under Reporting in the Monitoring workspace.