You can whip out reports in SSRS (SQL Server Reporting Services) very quickly with the report builders (2.0 and 3.0 are money).
But what should you remember to do each time, or information to get?
- Where does the data come from (GL, Sales, etc) – we could use a cube or datawarehouse, or staging, or Other system, etc.
- Report Name (on Report Manager)
- Short description of the purpose – to appear under report name on report manager
- Should it go into an existing folder, or a new folder, or the user’s folder?
- Who should have access?
- How should it be consumed? Email (and what, excel, pdf, web archive, etc), To a file share, User Ran?
- What parameters should be available? a. What are the defaults?
- Can we get a rough mockup of how it should look? a. Can we get an existing report (if avail, crystal, or excel, etc)
- Does it need to print on a 8×11 page?
- How often are you going to run it? (Hourly,Daily, Weekly, Monthly, ad-hoc)
- Is it going to be informational, or used to export data and manipulate? (if export – is there something else we can do?)
- If tabular data, does it need to be sortable?
- Do snapshots need to be taken? a. How many do we save? b. How often to take them? c. Do you need ability to delete them?
you get the idea, the list could go on and on. So creating that report is simple, but actually getting and doing all the things necessary to get it done “correctly” is more time consuming.
What other things can you think of for the list?
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