I’m looking for a way to preview my report changes directly in Report Builder and skip the Save-Upload cycle nightmare until the report is actually ready.
I came across an old thread: https://www.epiusers.help/t/how-to-preview-a-ssrs-report-in-report-builder/36272 but I don’t understand how to apply this to Kinetic in the Epicor Cloud. Any idea if it can be done? Would I be able to look up my report server url from somewhere in my setup?
We always used a BAQ that calculates the TableGuid number that I need to run the form from Report Builder.
For example, I print preview an invoice and I choose to Archive it for a day in the print box. Then I can pull the guid number from the BAQ and that’s all I need to preview the form again from Report Builder. (see pic where I paste in the TableGuid and then click View Report)
You need to use the option when on the printing dialog that says Generate for Design. After that, go to the system monitor and find it on the report tab. You should find that this process automatically sets the archive period for 1 day. In says monitor with the report highlighted, Actions, Design SSRS. Specify where to download the local copy.
You can save in report builder, then on that Epicor window just do actions, preview and it’ll render it - its really quick too, much more convenient than copying and pasting the guid in all the time. Once finished you publish it from the actions menu.
Bonus thing you can do is make amends to the RDD, and on the actions menu choose Regenerate Data.
It is my understanding that a Kinetic Cloud customer cannot preview directly in Report Builder as we (cloud customers) do not have direct access to the Epicor cloud servers. This is why we have to upload and preview each change via Epicor (which CAN communicate with the servers).
I’m not sure we’re using the same version of Report Builder - we were directed to a free download by Epicor (Report Builder version 15). I can pull up the parameters area TableGUID field, but I can’t edit it. I tried setting a default value under properties, but that doesn’t seem to work. Any ideas?
From @markdamen answer. You can preview the report after saving locally for this screen under the actions menu. Then after you like the report, the report can be uploaded from the same screen.
Oh sorry, my Kinetic is on Azure, but prem. I see now that you had asked about cloud.
I’m afraid you might be right, but Mark’s solution of using the ‘Generate’ option is a solid alternative. Not as streamlined as what we could do with Crystal, but it’ll work.
If you use the screen that Tom posted the screenshot of, the preview is very quick. Quicker than copy/pasting the guid all the time into the TableGUID when previewing.
The only couple of things I don’t like now with SSRS compared to Crystal reports are:
Preview Amendments - I liked the fact that you could preview the report, and then make amendments live! So you could see the effect of a font change, or moving a field etc.
Printed Page Layout - SSRS is definitely designed around interactive reports on screen, more than it is paper printed out reports. It seemed easier in Crystal to control how things landed on which page.