Resolving "Error: Subreport Could Not Be Displayed" in Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0

Problem:  When running a custom report in Microsoft CRM with embedded sub-reports, you get an error where the sub-report should be.

With the new report structure in Microsoft CRM 4.0, sub-reports have to be linked to the parent report.  This typically happens automatically when the sub-report is uploaded; however, I have seen several cases where the link can be broken, such as when the sub-report is uploaded before the parent report, or when the parent report record is deleted and recreated.

Solution: link the sub-report to the parent report

Step 1--Select the sub-report from report entity list.  Click the Edit report button

Step2--Using the parent report lookup field, associate the parent report with the sub-report

Comments

[Tracy]

My problem with this-
I edited the account overview sub-report in Visual Studio and saved it as a different name, and uploaded it into CRM. But, it won't let me select a parent account-the magnifying glass is grayed out.
Any ideas what I'm doing wrong?

[Joel Lindstrom]

Make sure that your newly renamed subreport is referenced in the parent report, delete the parent and the sub-report from crm, upload the parent report again, then upload and link the sub-report.

Sometimes when you edit reports in CRM and upload a new rdl, they retain the old settings. I don’t know why, but sometimes the settings stick. Typically deleting these reports and recreating them fixes any of these problems.

[maria]

So, if I understand it, the only way for the subreport to be shown is linking subreport to parent report. However, CRM existing reports include subreports that are not uploaded. How does that work then? What I need to do is uploading a report which includes a subreport without uploading the subreport itself. Is this possible? We need to do this in order to prevent customers from using the subreport as standalone.

Thanks in advance

[Joel Lindstrom]

Hi Maria,

That’s a great question.
Actually, all of the subreports used by the standard CRM reports are published through CRM; however, they are not revealed through the “Available reports” view. For example, if you change your view of reports to “All Reports, including sub-reports,” you will see the sub-reports used in the standard CRM reports, such as the “Account Distribution Detail” subreport, which is a subreport to the Account Distribution Report.

The way that you make a subreport not available from the “Available Reports” view is to make sure that when you upload the report you don’t select anything in the “Display in” lookup under the categorization section of the report information form.

Once you do that, your subreport will not be easily located by most users. There are a couple of other things that you can do to make it hard to find or unusable unless run as part of the master report.

For example, you can give your subreport a different name that your users won’t realize is the subreport.

Also, using the “hidden” property on the report, you could make your parameter on the subreport accept null values, then using the hidden property of the report, have it hide the contents if the parameter is null.

I will do a follow up post and include more details.

Thanks for reading the blog

[Joel Lindstrom]

Posted an answer to Maria's question here:
http://blog.customereffective.com/blog/2009/03/preventing-users-from-executing-subreports.html

[Kenny Della Valle]

It looks like it isn't possible to have a sub-report used by multiple reports... Is that true? For example, I had created a standard coversheet that I thought could be used by many reports. It looks like I can only choose one report at a time to be used as its parent report, and any others get the "Error: Subreport..." message. Is there a better way to accomplish what I was try to do?

[Joel Lindstrom]

Hi Kenny,

You are probably right that you cannot have a CRM uploaded subreport associated with multiple parents; however, there is another way to do it--if you have a subreport that needs to be called from links on multiple reports, upload it directly to the report server, then use the jump to URL action rather than the jump to report action, and specify the url of the report on the report server. If you need to pass parameters, you can still do this by appending them to the url.

Of course, if your cover subreport is embedded in the report, then you probably won't be able to do it, because you don't have an option (at least in SRS 2005) to display a web site in a report.

In that case you are probably best copying your subreport for each report, or including that in the layout of the report.

[karan]

What needs to be done if a subreport runs fine for the system administrator role but gives an error "Subreport could not be shown" for the sales person role in crm?