Uniqueness is a sought after quality these days. That’s why hipsters wear fanny packs and wristwatches on their ankles. As impractical as that might be, there are certainly times when uniqueness is justified and necessary. This is especially true when it comes to external facing documents generated by your ERP system. Different customers and vendors can have rigorous requirements about what information is provided and where exactly on the page it’s provided. As a result, you’ll have multiple slightly different designs and you’re probably wishing that you could copy one design to another to ease the development burden. You’re in luck because, with the power of Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012, SSRS, and Visual Studio, you can do just that in 8 relatively simple steps (so long as you have a right button on your mouse, take that Apple).
Step 1: Open Visual Studio, locate the report in the Application Explorer, right-click, and select Edit.
Step 2: Select the report design you want to copy (i.e.: Sales Confirm > Designs > Report), right-click, and select Copy.
Step 3: Select the Designs node, right-click, and select Paste. Rename the report as you see fit.
Step 4: Make any changes you want to the design. Let the design’s energy sweep over you and guide you, but be firm with it and let it know you mean business. This is a business after all.
Step 5: Right-click the Report Model Project in the Solution Explorer and select Add to AOT.
Step 6: Locate the report in the AOT (SSRS Reports > Reports > the report name), right-click, and select Deploy Element. The new design will be under the Designs node.
Step 7: You can verify the deployment on the Report Manager site.
Step 8: To add the new report design to the Print Management form, you’ll need to follow the instruction in this blog post. Basically, you will add the following code to the Populate method on the PrintMgmtReportFormat table:
Now you’re done! Here it is in the Print Management form:
Happy reporting!