Report Writers Guide

This document contains information you need to create new reports, or to modify existing reports, for Microsoft CRM 3.0. Microsoft CRM 3.0 ships with many reports that provide useful business information to the user. You can use these reports as "templates" for creating your own custom reports.

Microsoft CRM provides an enhanced feature set for report development including Advanced Find, data pre-filtering, drill-through to Microsoft CRM, and more. By using these features, your reports will be able to take advantage of the unique and powerful capabilities built into Microsoft CRM.

This guide covers the following key topics:

• An overview of the Microsoft CRM database as it relates to report writing.
• A description of the development environment for report writing.
• Detailed information about Microsoft CRM report writing, testing, and publishing (deployment).
• Information about report performance issues and best practices.
• Information about managing Microsoft CRM reports with Reporting Services Report Manager.

Prerequisites

To make use of the information provided in the Report Writers Guide, the following knowledge and experience is needed:

• Knowledge of how to write reports for SQL Server Reporting Services.
• Knowledge of the SQL language and of SQL Server 2000 or SQL Server 2005.
• Experience writing Reporting Services reports within the Report Designer component of Microsoft Visual Studio .NET.

In This Topic

Understanding the Microsoft CRM Database

Report Development Environment

Writing Reporting Services Reports

Testing and Troubleshooting

Publishing a Report

Best Practices

Performance Issues

Managing Reports with Report Manager

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