Reports in Management Packs.
In my previous post “Authoring reports for SCOM 2007” I said that there are basically tree ways to author new reports for SCOM 2007. Create a linked report, use Report Builder or create a custom report using Visual Studio. The best way to introduce a new report in the system is to include it in a Management Pack (read “SCOM 2007 Report Catalog” post for details).
Any Management Pack (MP) can contain reports. If you have RDL file you can simply paste it content under Reporting/Report/Definition node in the MP.
Here is an example:
<Reporting>
<Reports>
<Report ID="Demo.MyReport" Accessibility="Public" Visible="true">
<Definition>
[Paste content of the RDL file here...]
</Definition>
</Report>
</Reports>
</Reporting>
ID is the name your report is deployed under to the SSRS. ID is also a reference for your report inside the Operations Manager. It has to be unique inside the MP and if you specify Accessibility="Public" other management packs could reference your report if they like to use it as a drill-down or as a sub-report.
Your report is going to be visible inside the catalog if you set Visible to "true". Specify "false" if you author a sub-report or a drill down report that you don’t like to be a part of the list of reports users can run directly.
That’s it! Your report is ready to go. To complete the picture however you probably want to give you report a friendly name. That name is displayed in the console when user clicks on your management pack inside the Reporting navigation tree.
To give your report a friendly name you need to define a display string inside the management pack and target it to your report ID.
<LanguagePacks>
<LanguagePack ID="ENU" IsDefault="true">
<DisplayStrings>
<DisplayString ElementID="Demo.MyReport">
<Name>My Report</Name>
<Description>My First SCOM 2007 Report</Description>
</DisplayString>
</DisplayStrings>
</LanguagePack>
</LanguagePacks>