Fixing a Reporting Services Report that belongs to someone else

It is a common occurance in a shop with multiple report developers and without version control. Someone goes on vacation, you get a call that the report is giving an error, and then what? You don't have the local Visual Studio project or rdl file to edit. No Source Safe to pull the file from. What do you do?

Login to your reporting services host at http:\\[hostname]\Reports to get a list of folders and reports. Navigate the directory structure to find the offending report. Once you find it, you need to copy it to the local PC.

If the "Show Details" button appears on the right hand side of the sub-toolbar, click it. When it reads "Hide Details" you are ready to move on. Now click on the icon in the "Edit" column (just after the check-box). Now under the "Report Definition" section you will see an "Edit" link. When you click the "Edit" link, you will get a save dialog box and can save the report rdl file to your PC. My recomendation is to save it first to your desktop.

Then open SQL Server Business Intelligence Studio (i.e. Visual Studio) and either open a project that you use for researching that person's reports or start a new project to use for researching other people's reports. In the Solution Explorer, right-click on the Reports folder and select Add-->Existing Item...

You navigate to your Desktop (or wherever you saved the rdl) and select the rdl you just downloaded. Now it is a part of your project and you can look at data sources, evaluate issues, and exercise your genius to solve the problem.

And if the solution does not lie in the data sources, you can always setup the Target report folder, server, etc. to post changes to the actual rdl file. If you do this, I recommend holding onto that copy of the rdl that is still sitting on your desktop because it makes for a good backup in case you make things worse and need to back track.