You might be reading this hoping that I have the magic answer on how to make the Report Manager portal look the way you want it to, but as of SQL 2008 R2 we’re still pretty limited. Shouldn’t it be easy – maybe even part of the install – to put a company logo on the top and try to make it look like the rest of the intranet?

For IT professionals it’s a web page, we use it, and if the colors change or the logo isn’t there, we barely notice. But that’s not true for the average business user. End users find it confusing and annoying to have to learn Reporting Services (and most other apps too!). The trick is to just treat it like a web page, make it seem like just a few more links, and that reduces the pressure they feel in having to learn something new.

Note that you can change a few things via the CSS, and you can open up the *.aspx files and add an image, but shouldn’t it be easier? I wonder if the reason it’s not is to drive organizations towards Sharepoint integration, which is an elegant solution, but not one that fits everyone.