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Using Visual Studio for Report Design

July 3, 2026 05:00 AM
1 min read

Once the Reporting Services is installed, you need to configure Visual Studio to create a Project to hold the Reports. You also need to configure a Shared Data Source, which is the database connection information for the Reports.

Note
It is required that you follow the exact naming conventions as shown here to ensure that the Aras Innovator integration with the Reporting Services works correctly.

Create a New Report Project

Report parts are deprecated from SSDT for all releases of SQL Server Reporting Services after SQL Server Reporting Services 2019 and discontinued starting in SQL Server Reporting Services 2022 and Power BI Report Server.

For more information on how to create a Report: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/sql/reporting-services/lesson-1-creating-a-report-server-project-reporting-services?view=sql-server-ver16

For more information on SSDT for Visual Studio 2022: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/sql/ssdt/download-sql-server-data-tools-ssdt?view=sql-server-ver16#ssdt-for-visual-studio-2022

Start SQL Server Data Tools and create a new Innovator Reports project.

Start Visual Studio and create New Report Server Project. Click Next.

This becomes the Reporting Services Folder to hold the Reports for Aras Innovator.

Configure Project Properties

Open the Solutions Explorer panel from the View --> Solutions Explorer menu if it is not already opened.

Right-click the Innovator Reports folder and select the Properties context menu choice.

In the Properties dialog, set the TargetServerURL field to the URL of the Report Server. For example, http://localhost:80/ReportServer, where the actual name of the server host name is entered in place of localhost.

Set the OverwriteDateSources flag to True.

Add New Shared Data Source

In the same Solutions Explorer panel, right-click the Shared Data Sources folder, select Add New Data Source context menu choice.

Connection Properties

  1. Select or enter a server name for the machine with the installed SQL Server.
  2. Select the Use this user name and password option, enter login credentials for the database, and select the Save My passwordoption.
  3. Select or enter a database name.

Deploy the Shared Data Source

By default, the name of the Shared Data Source is the name of the Database you selected previously. You can rename this if you want. Finally, you need to deploy this new Shared Data Source.