Subscription and Delivery Scenarios

Push reports out to users in your organization

Create a subscription and specify a group alias or e-mail alias to receive a report that you want to distribute.

You can have Reporting Services determine the subscription data at run time. If you want to send the same report to a group that has a changing list of members, you can use a query to derive the subscription list at run time.

View reports offline

Users can select PDF or Web archive formats in a subscription. These formats are recommended for viewing reports offline.

Archive reports to a file share

Reports that you want to archive can be sent directly to a shared folder that you back up on a nightly schedule.

Send large reports to disk

Large reports that take too long to load in a browser can be sent to a shared folder in a format that can be viewed in a desktop application.

Preload the cache

If you have multiple instances of a parameterized report or a large number of report viewers, you can preload reports in the cache to reduce processing time used to display the report.

Target a desktop application as a viewing device

If you want to work with a report as a Microsoft Excel file, you can create a subscription that sends the report as an Excel file. If you have a shared folder that stores the working documents for a specific work group, you can specify it in the subscription.

Customize report output for individual users

Use data-driven subscriptions to customize report output, delivery options, and report parameter settings at run time. The subscription uses a query to get input values from a data source at run time.

You can use data-driven subscriptions to perform a mail-merge operation that sends a report to a list of subscribers that is determined at the time the subscription is processed.