Recently one of my blog reader posted me a question where the requirement is to zip and email SSRS reports to users. Reader wanted to check with me if this can be done using subscriptions and any kind of delivery method. The two main delivery methods available are file-system and email delivery, and to the best of my knowledge, none of them include zipping of files.
When report files are huge in size, to the magnitude of several MBs, emailing those files is quite a big challenge and also it's not an advisable option. In my views, SSRS team should make an option available of zipping the file to at least any one compressed file format, when the file are delivered using file-system or email delivery methods. In my views, these are some of the very common reporting related requirements that SSRS would have to incorporate to gain acceptance as a serious and enterprise class reporting platform.
The order of this process can be as follows:
1) Create report output stream using subscriptions, and the output can be in requested file format.
2) Zip the output stream to any compressed file format, at least .cab format which windows has been using since the times of it's evolution.
3) Deliver the file using file-system / email delivery methods.
As of now, there are no out-of-box options to directly deliver zipped reports to file share output / email the same. SSIS can be used for the same purpose. In the whitepaper that I have authored, I have explained how to generate SSRS reports in bulk using SSIS and SSRS 2008 R2. With little more coding in the Script task, you can zip the created files and email them if required. Two of the articles that demonstrate how to implement the zipping functionality can be read from here and here.
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2 comments:
For us its a two step process.
Deliver into File system using SSRS (filename has the e-mail). Then use a powershell to automatically zip an d email the reports. Job done!
I went down the SSIS / filesystem / shellscript path once, but in the end created a SSRS Rendering extension that can do this.
This allows you to choose "Zipped Excel" for example as report format in the Report Manager or via url access etc. And you can still use the built-in subscription mechanism to deliver your reports without anything in between.
It is posted at codeproject under the name Zip Rendering Extension.
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