SSRS Report Descriptions Query

• darrenkelly

  SSCommitted

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  July 17, 2017 at 8:45 am

  #331814

  Hi
  In SSRS 2016 is there a way to add a description to the report before it gets deployed so that when the report is deployed the new/updated description is deployed with it.

   We keep having to go to the Report Server and add in and change the descriptions for each report across all our environments, which is just daft.

  Thanks

• Sue_H

  SSC Guru

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  July 17, 2017 at 4:10 pm

  #1951288

  darrenkelly - Monday, July 17, 2017 8:45 AM

  Hi
  In SSRS 2016 is there a way to add a description to the report before it gets deployed so that when the report is deployed the new/updated description is deployed with it.

   We keep having to go to the Report Server and add in and change the descriptions for each report across all our environments, which is just daft.

  Thanks

  I haven't played with it in Visual Studio/SSDT for awhile but the description property is exposed but it doesn't update. I traced it before and I think it just goes back to whatever the original value was.
  It is exposed and you can add/update it with Report Builder - report properties, Description.
  You can also update it using the web services. There is an example of updating a report description using web services in this link:
  ReportingService2010.SetProperties Method

  Sue

• darrenkelly

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  July 21, 2017 at 10:37 am

  #1952148

  Thanks Sue_H

• Lowell

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  July 21, 2017 at 11:01 am

  #1952156

  i have a job scheduled on each server that contains a reportserver database that updates the job description with the report name, so it's much easier to track down that the job named "someguid" is actually SSRS Report Subscription: /Departments/Information Technology/Public/Some Technical Report

  that metadata to build the command is surprisingly simple:
  SELECT
     'UPDATE msdb.dbo.sysjobs set description = ''SSRS Report Subscription: '
     + e.path COLLATE SQL_Latin1_General_CP1_CI_AS + Char(13) + Char(10) + e.NAME COLLATE SQL_Latin1_General_CP1_CI_AS + ''' WHERE job_id = ''' + CONVERT(VARCHAR(40), b.job_id) + ''';' AS Fix
     FROM dbo.ReportSchedule a
       INNER JOIN msdb.dbo.sysjobs b
          ON CONVERT(VARCHAR(40), a.ScheduleID) = b.NAME
       INNER JOIN dbo.ReportSchedule c
          ON b.NAME = CONVERT(VARCHAR(40), c.ScheduleID)
       INNER JOIN dbo.Subscriptions d
          ON c.SubscriptionID = d.SubscriptionID
       INNER JOIN dbo.Catalog e
          ON d.report_oid = e.itemid

  Lowell

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• Sue_H

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  July 21, 2017 at 11:08 am

  #1952158

  I may have misread but I had thought this was in reference to the description property for the report itself, not descriptions for the subscription jobs.

  Sue

• darrenkelly

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  August 3, 2017 at 2:36 am

  #1953903

  Apologies for the delay in responding - just completed two upgrades, SharePoint 2007 to SharePoint Online and SQL 2008 to SQL 2016, now that the dust has settled, I have some spare capacity again 🙂

  @lowell - that's a great idea.  Those GUID subscription names are really annoying.
  @sue - your first assessment was correct.

  So I get two great pieces of information for the price of one question.  I'm on a winning streak 🙂

• sqlmiguel

  Newbie

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  March 27, 2019 at 8:00 am

  #2033943

  SELECT Description
   FROM [ReportServer].[dbo].[Catalog]
  WHERE Name='<reportname>'