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Configure Report Server URLs (Report Server Configuration Manager)
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In Reporting Services, URLs are used to access the Report Server Web service and the web portal. Before you can use either application, you must configure at least one URL each for the Web service and the web portal. Reporting Services provides default values for both application URLs that work well in most deployment scenarios, including side-by-side deployments with other Web services and applications.
If you installed the default configuration, URLs were created automatically using the default values.
If you are using the Reporting Services Configuration tool to create or modify the URLs, you can accept the default values for a URL or specify custom values. A test link of the URL appears on page when you define the URL so that you can immediately confirm that the settings you specified result in a valid connection. For step-by-step instructions on how to configure and test a URL, see Configure a URL (Report Server Configuration Manager) .
Defining a Report Server URL
The URL precisely identifies the location of an instance of a report server application on your network. When you create a report server URL, you must specify the following parts.
Default URLs
When you access a report server or the web portal through its URL, the URL should include the host name and not the IP address. On a TCP/IP network, the IP address will resolve to a host name (or the network name of the computer). If you used the default values to configure URLs, you should be able to access the Report Server Web service using URLs that specify the computer name or localhost as the host name:
https://<computername>/reportserver
https://localhost/reportserver
The settings that make these URLs available appear in the following table. This table shows the default values that enable a report server connection though URLs that include a host name:
An underlying URL reservation enables any valid host name to be used on a URL. The Reporting Services Configuration tool creates a URL reservation in HTTP.SYS using syntax that allows variations of the host name to resolve to a particular report server instance. For more information about URL reservations, see About URL Reservations and Registration (Report Server Configuration Manager) .
Server-side Permissions on a Report Server URL
Permissions on each URL endpoint are granted exclusively to the Report Server service account. Only this account has rights to accept requests that are directed to the Reporting Services URLs. Discretionary Access Control Lists (DACLs) are created and maintained for the account when you configure the service identity through Setup or the Reporting Services Configuration tool. If you change the service account, the Reporting Services Configuration tool will update all URL reservations that you created to pick up the new account information. For more information, see URL Reservation Syntax (Report Server Configuration Manager) .
Authenticating Client Requests Sent to a Report Server URL
By default, the authentication type supported on the URL endpoints is Windows Authentication. This is the default security extension. If you are implementing a custom or Forms authentication provider, you must modify the authentication settings on the report server. Optionally, you can also change the Windows Authentication settings to match the authentication subsystem used in your network. For more information, see Authentication with the Report Server .
In This Section
Configure a URL (Report Server Configuration Manager) This topic provides instructions for setting and modifying a URL reservation in the Reporting Services Configuration tool.
About URL Reservations and Registration (Report Server Configuration Manager) URLs are used to access applications and reports. This topic explains the application URLs, the default URLs, and how URL reservations and registration work in Reporting Services.
URL Reservation Syntax (Report Server Configuration Manager) The default URL reservations that Reporting Services uses are valid for most scenarios. However, if you want to restrict access or extend the deployment to enable Internet or extranet access, you might have to customize the settings to fit your requirements. This topic describes the syntax of a URL reservation and provides recommendations for creating custom reservations for your deployment.
URLs in Configuration Files (Report Server Configuration Manager) The RSReportServer.config file contains multiple entries for URL reservations and the URLs used by the web portal and report server e-mail delivery. This topic summarizes the URL configuration settings so that you can understand how they compare.
URL Reservations for Multi-Instance Report Server Deployments (Report Server Configuration Manager) When you install multiple instances of Reporting Services on a single computer, you increase the probability of encountering URL duplication when a URL is registered. To avoid these errors, follow the recommendations in this topic for creating instance-specific URL reservations.
Configure a URL (Report Server Configuration Manager)
Additional resources
Using URLs in SQL Server Reporting Services
Part 1 - navigating to an internet site.
One of the most obvious features of SQL Server Reporting Services is that the reports are presented to the user with a web browser. This means that SSRS natively has access to many of the same functional principles as most web pages and web sites. Specifically, this would include the use of hyperlinks (URLs) to easily navigate to other reports, web pages, or other web-based resources. How do we do that? With the Action property.
This is part 1 of a 2-part blog.
The Action property
If you’re not already familiar with it, the Action property allows us to control what happens when a user selects a text box, table cell, and most other objects within a report. Let's look at the options available to us.
Go to report Use this action is to link to another report. Most likely this is a detail report or other related report that provides more information on what you’re drilling into from the parent. SSRS provides a handy way to do this by simply selecting the report, assign the needed parameters to the linked report, and you’re done! However, the biggest gotcha to this method is that you are limited to reports that reside within the same project.
Go to bookmark This is used to navigate to a predefined location on your report. Most if not all objects within SSRS have a Bookmark property. Tag the Bookmark property of an object, and you can use this functionality to easily navigate and jump to them much like a standard website bookmark.
Understanding the URL
Most people already know that websites are accessed via hyperlink or URL (Uniform Resource Locator). But what may not be obvious is that hyperlinks (which are nothing more than simple strings) can contain elements that will control how the web page loads and operates. Depending on the platform used to build a site, in most cases this is how pages "talk" to each other within a site: via URLs that contain parameters or values which will be read by the page’s internal back-end code and affect how it runs.
Here are some examples of website URLs that contain some sort of field or text that that we can use to make the page load with specific data we want. I’ve highlighted the values to see what text we will need to dynamically change as we build our URL strings later. (Go ahead and try them if you like.) You'll see the links take you not just to the site, but to a specific page with an already-loaded searched value.
https://icdcodelookup.com/icd-10/codes/ Z45.0
https://npiregistry.cms.hhs.gov/registry/provider-view/ 1750381133
https://www.findacode.com/code.php? set=CPT&c=71045
You can even feed values into Google and automatically launch a search:
https://www.google.com/ search?q=CPT+71045
Our goal is to use this technique in SSRS to build dynamic URLs behind our report results. This will immediately add some inter-web functionality that we can directly control from our data.
Let’s build a simple provider dictionary report which will have a live link to the actual NPI registry website for that provider. We’ll use our provider’s known NPI to dynamically load the correct reference page on the official NPI Registry website for additional information.
We begin with an example of a simple statement that will return the provider information that will be used as the main data source in our report. Notice that we have a field we are going to call: url_ProviderNpi . This field is a combination of a hard-coded literal value (in this case, a website address), concatenated with a value (Npi) from the DMisProvider table. Together these comprise the URL string which will be the actual path we will be navigating to.
→ Pro Tip I find it easier to build the complete URL string within the SQL procedure instead of fumbling around with SSRS expressions on the report side. This makes it MUCH easier to control as well as making changes without editing the report every time. It is also a good excuse to brush up on your string building skills in SQL! You may or may not want to hard-code the base URL here too. Best practice would be to store these URLs in a reference table that could be easily edited and organized if they happen to change.
Data output looks good!
Notice our dynamically-built url_ProviderNpi field which uses the value of the Npi field.
Let's start with a basic SSRS report built from this same dataset (without the url_ProviderNpi in the output) then take a look at how we can modify it with a new Action property. Here's our starting point (yes, these are fictional names and NPI numbers):
Setting the Action Property
The final step is to configure the data from the Npi field on the report as a hyperlink to launch the URL. This is done by editing the Action property for the Npi column and specifiging the url_ProviderNpi field as the URL (a good illustration of why it’s easier to build the entire URL string in the SQL statement):
Also don’t forget to set the foreground color of the cell to blue so users will instinctively know to click on it! Our updated report should look something like this:
Now when we click on the NPI hyperlinked field in our report, it takes us directly to the NPI Registry site automatically loading the reference page for that provider. Notice the URL in the address bar which is what actually drives the content for the page:
Add more functionality to the Action
By default, when you click on a link in an SSRS report it opens the page in the same window, replacing the parent report you were viewing. Wouldn't it be nice if we could have it open in a new browser tab instead? Well we can, by adding some javascript to the expression used for our URL property. We're going to modify the Visual Basic expression used to link to the URL data field. To do this, first click the expression box next to the Select URL dropdown:
Then change the initial expression (which references the field name) by adding the javascript command along with delimiters before and after the field reference:
Now when we select the NPI field from our report, a new tab opens and goes to the linked website, passing the data we provided. Neat!
Wrapping up
Hopefully you've learned a new trick or two to add to your SSRS skills. In part 2 of this blog , we'll take a closer look at using this same URL Action property to navigate between different Visual Studio projects.
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Set URL to MS-SQL Reporting Services Engine
System > Configure > Change URL...
The URL to MS-SQL Reporting Services dialog configures the VSA connection to the SQL Services Reporting Services (SSRS) instance used to generate VSA reports. The SSRS may be installed locally or remotely from the KServer and locally or remotely from the SQL Server instance hosting the ksubscribers database.
Note: Installing or updating the VSA to Kaseya 2 allows you to bypass configuring the SSRS until after the installation or update.
Settings include:
- Host Name - The URL used by the VSA to connect to a SQL Server Reporting Services instance. Mandatory to run reports.
- Logo - The URL of the image displayed in the header of reports. Applies to some configurations.
- User Name - The user name used to access the Reporting Services instance when running reports. Applies to some configurations.
Note: - See the Kaseya SSRS Configuration user guide for a visual walkthrough of the steps described in this topic.
The VSA typically uses one of the following URL patterns to connect to a SQL Server Reporting Services instance. Specifying the appropriate URL is mandatory to run reports.
SQL on the same box as VSA
SQL box separate from VSA
By default, VSA report headers display the image specified by the System > Site Customization > Site Header . Changing the value in the System > Configure > Change URL... > Logo field overrides this default, changing the URL for report headers only . Changing the URL in the Change URL... > Logo field does not affect the display of the Site Header image.
If a logo does not display in SSRS reports it may be due to either of the following conditions:
- The SSRS is installed on the same machine as the KServer. SSRS is unable to retrieve the logo because of firewall issues. Change the URL to localhost from the externally available URL/IP address.
- The VSA has been configured using a self-signed SSL certificate. Change the protocol from https to http .
You can provide all VSA users with a credential that lets them run SSRS reports. This eliminates the need to maintain access rights for each VSA user requiring access to the SSRS. This applies in particular to VSA users in a workgroup instead of a domain, who don't have a centralized method of authentication such as Active Directory to manage access rights to the SSRS.
Credentials are specified in three locations:
- User Accounts in the system hosting the SSRS.
- SSRS Report Manager.
- VSA > System> Configure > Change URL... > User Name
This procedure creates a dedicated user—in this example, KaseyaReport —in the system hosting the SSRS. The SSRS Report Manager is used to give the KaseyaReport user access to running reports in the SSRS. Finally, the KaseyaReport credential is registered in the System> Configure > Change URL... > User Name fields. From that point forward the VSA uses that credential to access the SSRS every time a VSA user runs a report.
- Give the user a strong password.
- Uncheck the User must change password at next logon field.
- Check the User cannot change password and Password never expires fields.
- Apply appropriate permissions to the new user for your environment.
- On the system hosting the SSRS, open a browser and type in the URL for Report Manager , for example, http://localhost/Reports , using the Administrator account.
- Click Site Settings at the top right hand corner.
- Click Security in the left hand sidebar.
- Click New Role Assignment along the menu bar.
- Enter the username that was created in step 1 in the Group or user name field, for example, KaseyaReport .
- Select System User checkbox.
- Click Add .
- In the VSA, display the System > Server Management > Configure page. Click on the Change URL button to open the dialog.
- Click on the Edit button at the top of the page.
- Enter the credential you defined in step 1 and make sure the Specify Account checkbox is checked. This means SSRS will use the credential you entered. If the user, for example KaseyaReport , is not a domain user you can leave the Domain field blank.
- Click Save and then click on the Test button to test the changes.
Topic 6645: Send Feedback . Download a PDF of this online book from the first topic in the table of contents. Print this topic .
IMAGES
VIDEO
COMMENTS
URL access of the report server in SQL Server Reporting Services (SSRS) enables you to send commands to a report server through a URL
The Reporting Services Configuration tool creates a URL reservation in HTTP.SYS using syntax that allows variations of the host name to resolve
Click on the Advanced... button to open the Advanced Multiple Web Site Configuration window. · Click on Add in the HTTP section to add a new report server HTTP
From the Start menu, navigate to Microsoft SQL Server 2012 > Configuration Tools > Reporting Services Configuration Manager. · In the Reporting Services
From the Start menu, navigate to Microsoft SQL Server 2016 > Configuration Tools > Reporting Services Configuration Manager. · In the Reporting Services
The first step to build the URL is to find the "base" address of the published Patient Dashboard report (our target). We can do this by
One of the most obvious features of SQL Server Reporting Services is that the reports are presented to the user with a web browser. This means that SSRS
1. Go to Start>> Expand Microsoft SQL Server 2008 R2>> Expand Configuration Tools>> Click Reporting Services Configuration Manager
In Reporting, SSRS Report Manager URL is used to access the Report Server Web service and Report Manager. By default, Reporting Services provides a default URL.
User Accounts in the system hosting the SSRS. SSRS Report Manager. VSA > System> Configure > Change URL... > User Name. This procedure creates a dedicated user—