CHAPTER 10 MANAGING REPORTSCreating Snapshots for the Report History
The goal for the AR Reconciliation report is to allow it to execute at a specified time of month, during off-
peak hours for performance benefits, and to maintain a historical picture of each month’s processing. To
this end, we created the End of Month Financials shared schedule earlier in the chapter. Now it’s time to
use a beneficial feature of SSRS, which is the capability to process a report as a snapshot.
A snapshot is a static “point-in-time” copy of a report. Two types of snapshots are used in SSRS:
those generated as execution snapshots, which render a single report from a pre-executed point in time,
and those generated to be stored in report history, which can contain multiple copies of a report at given
points in time. In this section, we are concerned with showing how to configure the AR Reconciliation
report to generate snapshots for the report history so that we can generate a series of historical financial
reports.
You’ll use Report Manager to configure the report history properties for the AR Reconciliation report
so that a snapshot of the report is generated each time the report is processed, according to the End of
Month Financials schedule.
Let’s begin by looking at the available settings for storing the report history. As you can see in Figure
10-11, several settings affect not only the creation of snapshots, but also how the snapshots are stored in
the report history. From within Report Manager, you can navigate to the Snapshot Options screen by
placing the cursor over a report, clicking the down arrow, and selecting Manage as described earlier
when navigating to the properties. Once you are in the report properties screen, click the Snapshot
Options tab on the left.
Figure 10-11. Report shapshot options