The requirements for installing and running iService reports are described below. This is only required during initial installation.

Report Server - Microsoft SQL Server Reporting Services (SSRS) 2016 or higher is required. This requirement is for the version of  SSRS only. The iService database is supported on all versions from SQL Server 2012 R2 or higher. For more information on configuring your SSRS server, refer to Microsoft’s SSRS documentation.

PowerShell - Microsoft PowerShell 3.0 or higher (included in any version of Windows Server 2012 and higher) is required to use the iService reports installation script.

SSRS PowerShell Tools  Module - The installation scripts use this tool which is described in a GitHub repository at https://github.com/microsoft/ReportingServicesTools. The module is a PowerShell module provided by Microsoft that can be automatically configured using the command shown below.

Open a PowerShell prompt with Administrator privileges and run the following command:

Install-Module -Name ReportingServicesTools

You may be prompted once or twice to confirm the repository and nuget packages, press ‘y’ to continue.

Installing the SSRS Powershell Tools Module

iService reports are packaged with the iService Release Archive under the \Reports folder in the following structure:

During the release upgrade, you copied the contents of the Release Archive to your web server. That archive contains the files you need to install or upgrade reports.  

The reports utility (Deploy-iServiceReports.ps1) is a PowerShell script that accepts parameters to complete the various configuration tasks necessary to install reports. The basic format of the command is below.

./Deploy-iServiceReports.ps1

Utility Parameters

The iService Reports PowerShell Deploy Utility takes the following parameters.  Other than the Data Source properties, all parameters are required, but if a parameter is not given will fall back to the specified default values.  Parameters can be passed in using the following format:  

 
ParameterName ‘value’

The command accepts five parameters that are used for various configuration task. Parameters are entered using the format below.

./Deploy-iServiceReports.ps1 -parameterName 'parameterValue'

-ReportServerUri – Default value: http://localhost/ReportServer/

This is the location of the SSRS that you are deploying to.  If you are launching the deploy utility from the same server as SSRS is installed on, the default location can be used.  Otherwise, a different server location can be specified.

-ReportFolderName – Default value: iServiceCRM

This is the folder that the reports will be deployed to on your SSRS server.  This folder will be created if it doesn’t already exist.

-DataSourcesFolderName – Default value: Data Sources
This is the folder that you store shared data sources in.  All iService reports will reference the iService shared data source stored in this folder.  This folder will be created if the -DeployDataSource parameter was specified and the folder doesn’t already exist.

-DataSourceName – Default value: iServiceCRM
This is name of the iService shared data source that all deployed reports will reference for connection details to the iService tenant database.  Since a data source is required for all reports, the utility will halt deployment if it doesn’t find a previously deployed data source with the specified name in the data sources folder AND the -DeployDataSource parameter wasn’t given. A new data source with this name will be created or overwritten if the -DeployDataSource parameter was specified.

-DeployDataSource – (Optional) (No value necessary)
This parameter is a flag used to specify that you would like to either deploy a new iService data source or overwrite the existing iService data source. This is necessary for first-time deploys, or if you would like to change the connection details for an existing data source. If specified, the following parameters may optionally also be passed in. If they aren’t passed in, the utility will prompt for input for the following:

•-DataSourceServerName – (No default value)
The name of the SQL Server where your iService tenant database resides

•-DataSourceDatabaseName – (No default value)
The name of your iService tenant database

•-DataSourceUserName – (No default value)
A login on your SQL Server instance which has proper read access on the tenant database to run reports against.

•-DataSourcePassword – (No default value)
The password for the above login

ProTip: Be sure your username you are running the utility has “Content Manager” permissions to the SSRS server you are deploying to. This permission allows you to write reports to the server.  In general, any user in the Administrators group should automatically have this access by default.

Now we’ll run the utility with the -DeployDataSource parameter. It will prompt us to enter the various connection details for this new data source to connect to the iService tenant database (in subsequent deploys, we can drop the -DeployDataSource parameter):

Next, it will begin deploying. It will create the necessary folders and data source as needed, and upload the reports to the iServiceCRM folder on SSRS.

ProTip:  If PowerShell throws an Execution Policy error, you may need to change your server’s Execution Policy to RemoteSigned or Unrestricted using the Set-ExecutionPolicy command.  For more details, see the PowerShell documentation.

After the utility is completed, you should be able to see the new reports on your SSRS server in the default folder  /iServiceCRM

./Deploy-iServiceReports.ps1

Deploys reports to the ‘iServiceCRM’ folder on the same server that the utility was run from. Expects to find an existing iService data source located on the server at /Data Sources/iServiceCRM which it will link all deployed reports to.

./Deploy-iServiceReports.ps1 -DeployDataSource

Deploys reports to the ‘iServiceCRM’ folder on the same server that the utility was run from.  Will prompt the user for data source connection details, then create a new (or overwrite existing) data source at /Data Sources/iServiceCRM which it will link all deployed reports to.

./Deploy-iServiceReports.ps1 -ReportServerUri ‘https://www.MySSRSServer.com/ReportServer/’ -ReportFolderName ‘MyTenant’ -DataSourcesFolderName ‘DS’ -DataSourceName ‘MyTenant’

Deploys reports to the ‘MyTenant’ folder on an external SSRS server. Expects to find an existing iService data source located at /DS/MyTenant which it will link all deployed reports to.

./Deploy-iServiceReports.ps1 -DeployDataSource -DataSourceName ‘MyTenant’ -DataSourceServerName ‘MyiServiceServer’ -DataSourceDatabaseName ‘iService.MyTenant’ -DataSourceUserName ‘ssrs’ -DataSourcePassword ‘mypassword’

Deploys reports to the ‘iServiceCRM’ folder on the same server that the utility was run from. Will create a new (or overwrite existing) datasource at /Data Sources/MyTenant that connects to the iService tenant database named ‘iService.myTenant’ on the SQL Server instance located at ‘MyiServiceServer’ with the SQL login ‘ssrs’.  It will then link all deployed reports to this data source.

Future report package releases may remove reports that were contained in previous releases.  This may be because multiple reports were merged, reports were renamed, etc. The deploy utility will never remove reports from your SSRS server, but will warn if it detects that reports are no longer in the current release.  

If reports were removed in the release deployed, you may see a notice similar to the following:

Deprecated and removed reports

You can find more details on why the reports were removed in the iService release notes.  Generally, if they were removed from the release, they are no longer supported and should be deleted from the SSRS server.