Emailing MS Reporting Services 2005 Reports as if from a specific address

Question

We have various reporting services reports which are scheduled to automatically generate reports and email them to a distribution list. This works really well but they appear to come from [email protected].

This is all well and good but the PHB would like them to look like they are coming from [email protected]. We've got a group set up so Exchange lets us (those within OurGroup) send messages from Outlook using OurGroup in the From address, but I'm struggling to find how to configure Reporting Services to do this.

Is it a server wide configuration option? Is it a user access profile option? Could we do it programatically by attaching to the RS Server using an app (many of the reports are triggered by code already).

Edit: We share the server with other groups - so it has to be for a subset or on a report-by-report basis. (It's RS'05 if it makes a difference, although we're on the path to upgrading to '08.)

Answer 1

You can configure the sender e-mail address using the Reporting Services Configuration Manager (available under "Configuration" in the SQL Server 2005 start menu item). On the left-side pane, click the "Email Settings" header, and specify the sender address.

This is the address that will appear on ALL reports generated on the server you are configuring. I don't believe there is a way to specify sender addresses on a report level.

HTH.

Answer 2

Are you using a data-driven subscription, or just a simple subscription type in RS to distribute your report?

I believe with a data-driven subscription, you can provide a custom table with information that can be used by the subscription engine to specify properties of the subscription, including the parameters for a report, recipient list, format type, etc. It lets you specify the TO/FROM/SUBJECT, etc for the email communication based on the data found in your custom table. Check it out and let us know if that works out for you.

cheers.

Answer 3

Sorry, you can't.

Because it use SMTP, you are limited to the protocol. The setting are defined in the .config files and are not configurable at run time or in the app or in a report/subscription.

Outlook uses MAPI which allows "From" to be specified.

Now, there are ugly workarounds :-)

1. If you send the reports to a mailbox, then you can use rules to forward and change the email. However, the mailbox must be associated with a login that you can log into and configure the rules. Otherwsie, you'll need Outlook running to apply rules if you simply connect to the mailbox.

2. Install RS multiple times and configure the "From" email differently per install. In this case "FROM" is defined in the config files.

3. Send email to a service that monitors the mailbox to do your forwarding

Option 3 is obviously the neatest but has most investment.