Enable report subscriptions to write files into the web portal

[Anonymous]

We have several reports that are "run once", as part of the stored procedure saves data into the database. These reports need to be available to end users without them rerunning the RDL report. We are running Power BI Report Server and have the Excel Online functionality installed, so posting the rendered reports into the web portal seems like a perfect solution.

I am looking for a way to automate that posting step. We currently have subscriptions setup that write to a UNC path. It would be nice to be able to render directly to the web portal path as a future enhancement. 

Until that is available, is there a way to script this? Will uploading Excel files work using rs.exe, like deploying RDL files?

[krisztb]

The rs.exe does not support Excel files and PowerBI reports, but you can use Reporting Services PowerShell commands (available here: https://github.com/Microsoft/ReportingServicesTools) and publish the files using the server's REST API exposed by the http://[myserver]/reports endpoint.

Check Write-RsRestFolderContent.ps1 and Write-RsRestCatalogItem.ps1 commands here: https://github.com/Microsoft/ReportingServicesTools/tree/master/ReportingServicesTools/Functions/Cat...

You just need to schedule a local task on the server that calls the command to pick up the files from your drop folder and publish it, e.g.: 

    powershell Write-RsRestFolderContent -ReportPortalUri 'http://localhost/reports' -Path 'C:\drop' -RsFolder '/'

Reporting Services also allows you to implement a custom delivery extension to do that job, but the cost can be higher: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/sql/reporting-services/extensions/delivery-extension/implementing-a...

The third and cheapest option is caching or using shapshots: (https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/sql/reporting-services/report-server/set-report-processing-properti...), but it is not designed explicitly to make sure the report only runs once, rather to improve performance of long-running reports.

Hope this helps,

Krisztian

[Anonymous]

I'll give it a try. Thanks Krisztian!