Faxing Reporting Services reports (TIFF/F)

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Faxing Reporting Services reports (TIFF/F)

Chuck Bevitt

Right there with Babe

Points: 754
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December 5, 2007 at 1:59 pm

#377355

We need to create reports in Reporting Services that will be distributed via a web application (in PDF format - easily done by Reporting Services) and by fax, which requires a faxable document format, usually TIFF/F.
Does anyone know how to create TIFF/Fs in Reporting Services, or, in general, how to fax Reporting Services reports?
Thanks in advance.

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Ben Sullins-437405 SSCertifiable Points: 5397 More actions · Answer 1

TIFF is a native export format for SSRS reports. Not sure how you could send them directly to a fax w/o writing your own custom delivery extension...

Cheers,

Ben Sullins
bensullins.com
Beer is my primary key...

Michael Earl-395764 SSC Guru Points: 53873 More actions · Answer 2

It will partly depend on your faxing software. RightFax, for instance will allow you to include an additional page (which you would have to add to the report) with commands like the phone number in a font that it will recognize. If you were to do this, you would need to simply print to the RightFax printer.

Ben Sullins-437405 SSCertifiable Points: 5397 More actions · Answer 3

If Michaels statement about the RightFax software you could install the 'Printer Delivery Extension' sample that I believe allows you to create a subscription that sends the report directly to a 'printer' ...

Cheers,

Ben Sullins
bensullins.com
Beer is my primary key...

Chuck Bevitt Right there with Babe Points: 754 More actions · Answer 4

Thanks to all who responded. Hopefully, I might hear some more back.

While TIFF is a native Reporting Services rendering type, "TIFF" is not a single, atomic specification. There are many formats of TIFF files. The format that ImageRendering.dll module produces is not faxable.

Here are a couple of links describing TIFF file formats:

http://www.fileformat.info/format/tiff/egff.htm

http://www.fileformat.info/mirror/egff/ch09_05.htm

It is possible to set parameters for rendering modules, either globally in a config file or for individual reports by including parameters in the URL, to control aspects of how the module renders the report; however, the allowable parameters to the ImageRendering.dll module do not permit creating faxable TIFF file.

Here are a few of links regarding setting rendering module parameters and what parameters exist:

http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms156281.aspx

http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms155397.aspx

http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms155373.aspx

While I personally dislike printer driver solutions, this may be the only way. One flavor of this is a fax server, such as RightFax, where printing a report to the fax server print driver results in sending a fax.

Another flavor is a print driver that saves the report as a faxable TIFF file, such a PeerNet (www.PeerNet.com). If nothing better comes along, we'll probably wind up going this way, as we already have a home built fax server and the PeerNet driver.

Still, it'd be nice to be able to get faxable TIFFs directly from Reporting Services.

spam123-836363 SSC Rookie Points: 49 More actions · Answer 5

I am just wondering if anyone has any other ideas on this issue?.

We have exactly the same problem - the file format of the Reporting Services TIFF file is certainly not compatible with faxable TIFF images (TIFF Profile F, or CCIT Group 3 Fax).

I have noticed it seems to render the TIFF using the system "image/tiff" MIME type, and I am wondering if there might be a way to change the settings for that MIME type to produce the correct TIFF image?

We need a way to configure the tag information and renderer for the TIFF files so they can be produced in a usable format. I have also downloaded the peernet print driver mentioned above (and this does have options for all the required settings) but I cant work out a way to implement this approach in our system the way I would like, without doing messy things like dropping TIFF images into a folder and then emailing the images to the FAX server with a seperate process.