I had a call last week from an old client who wanted to transfer all their reports from SSRS (Reporting Services) to SharePoint. Basically, the goal was to take the reports from 4 different web server and insert them in SharePoint. By doing this, they were going to get all the benefits from the SharePoint security and have a place more user friendly for their employees to consult report.
Here are the steps that I took to make this :
1- I installed a new SSRS instance with the SharePoint Integration Mode (see : http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb326356.aspx)
2- I installed a new SharePoint Foundation (2010) server to deploy all my reports
3- I created 3 document library inside SharePoint, one for each major application that uses reports
4- I activated the Reporting Service Integration feature inside SharePoint
5- I added the 3 content types (Report Server Model, Report Server Report, Report Server DataSource) and deleted the default Document Content Type
That's it, I had everything setup to start the migration of my reports inside SharePoint. Actually, I thought I had everything... How could I move those 200 reports inside my new SharePoint site without doing the whole thing manually?
First of all, I was able to find all the reports on my client Team Foundation Server. They were managing version history with it. Ok, so I have all my reports in a Folder based structure. What can I do with this?
I've tried to open my list with the Windows Explorer view but, after "calculating" for 5 minutes, it started the upload and then crash. What a mess... With the multiple upload feature, I was not able to import more than 100 reports at once. Not that bad... But what about the meta data on those reports? I wanted to put some categories / Application name / module name / etc. properties. By using one of the methods above, I would have to modify every report manually to set those properties? I like spending hours with SharePoint, but not doing properties edition!!!
I finally decide to use Sharegate to move all my reports to their new location. With few clicks, I was able to create 3 property templates (one for each list) and transfer all my reports from my desktop (a getlatest from the TFS server) to my 3 libraries inside SharePoint. As simple as that! This tool save me a lot of time (and my client a lot of money). Thanks to Sharegate!
Reports from my desktop on the left and my destination list on the right
Defining a property template to copy my reports
All my documents are now in my destination