Finding and Viewing Reports in Report Manager

Report Manager is a Web-based tool that includes features for viewing and managing reports. You must use Microsoft Internet Explorer 6.0 or later to open Report Manager. To open Report Manager, type the Report Manager URL in a browser window. For more information about a Report Manager URL might be configured on your report server, see Configuring Report Server Virtual Directories.

Depending on role assignments, you can configure Report Manager to provide report viewing and navigation support to users who have minimal access to a report server. To configure limited access for a large group of users, choose the default Browser role in the role assignments you create for specific parts of the report server folder hierarchy. To learn how to create role assignments, see Tutorial: Setting Permissions in Reporting Services.

Finding Reports

To select a report, search for a report by name or description, or browse report server folders to find the report you want.

In Reporting Services, published reports and folders are represented as a hierarchy similar to those of file systems and Web sites. To find the reports that you want to run, you can browse through the folder hierarchy. Not all reports that are visible in the folder hierarchy are accessible. Some reports may prompt you for your user name and password to determine whether you can access the data source for the report.

About Folder Navigation in Report Manager

To navigate through the folder hierarchy, use the Contents page, which appears automatically when you run Report Manager. It shows the contents of any folder. By default, it opens at the root folder (Home); the Contents page for Home is the start page for the application. For more information, see Contents Page (Report Manager).

Report Manager does not include the tree view that is often used in file management systems. Instead, the folder path is displayed as a row of links at the top of the page. Folder names are listed in sequence, starting with the root folder (Home). As you open each additional folder, the folder name is added to the folder path at the top of the page. When you open a report, the name of the report is also added to the folder path.

Folder navigation links

Folder navigation links

Use the following techniques to navigate through a folder hierarchy:

  • To view the contents of a folder, click the folder name on the Contents page. A folder page opens, displaying the contents of the folder.
  • To navigate down through the folder hierarchy, open a subfolder of the current folder. Folders contain reports, resources, shared data source items, and other folders. Clicking a folder icon opens the folder, showing the contents of the hierarchy one level down.
  • To navigate up through the folder hierarchy, in the row of links at the top of the page, click the name of the folder whose contents you want to see.

Using the Browser Back Button

Reports are always cached by the browser session, so if you open a report, you can usually return to it by clicking the Back button. This is true even if you were required to supply a user name and password to run the report. You cannot really close a rendered report until you close the browser. You can also use the Back button to scroll through folder pages that you have previously opened.

Running Reports

After you find a report, simply click the report name to run it. For more information about opening reports in Report Manager, see How to: Open and Close a Report (Report Manager).

Change History

Release History

17 July 2006

New content:
  • Opening Report Manager.
  • Creating role assignments.

See Also

Tasks

How to: Start Report Manager (Report Manager)

Concepts

Searching for Reports and Other Items
Using Default Security
Report Manager
Processing Large Reports
Running a Parameterized Report
Viewing Reports

Other Resources

Icons in Report Manager

Help and Information

Getting SQL Server 2005 Assistance