SSRS Templates

Question

I'm trying to figure out if you can create template files or skins for SSRS reports. We are trying to standardize all of our reports to look similar. If there are no known ways to create templates or skins how do you work around this issue?

Answer 1

Yes. They are called RDLC files.

You basically specify what your report will look like in these files, which are just XML files. There is a built-in editor for these files in Visual Studio, which is drag and drop and very easy to use.

Answer 2

If you're using the Buisness Intelligence Design Studio to create your reports, this was the approach we used for SQL 2005:

• create a template by customising the default.rdl
• copy to C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio 8\Common7\IDE\PrivateAssemblies\ProjectItems\ReportProject
• this template then shows up in BIDS when you select Add > New Item in the Solution Explorer

We use a batch script to duplicate the latest template across all the development machines.