Hello and welcome

In this, our first blog we would like to impart some wisdom on an area that some of you have made enquiries about, we get a lot of questions at Intellicore and when we see one that crops up as often as this we think it useful to put together a little “How to” guide.

Please let us know how you get on with this, if you need more (or less) detail and if there’s anything we’re not doing that we should be, all comments welcomed! And now, without further ado:

In order to install BIDs, which allows for the modification of CRM 2011 reports in Visual studio, one needs to follow these steps (in the EXACT ORDER):

1. Install Microsoft SQL Server 2008 R2 (with BIDs).
• http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/search.aspx?q=sql+server+2008+r2
2. Install Visual Studio 2008. 
• http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=3713 
3. Install any Visual Studio 2008 Service Packs.
• Service Pack 1
  http://www.microsoft.com/en-gb/download/details.aspx?id=10986

These steps must be followed in the exact order for installation to work correctly.

From here, you can export any of your reports from Microsoft Dynamics CRM and import the files into BIDs in order to customise them to your exact specifications. Follow these steps to export a Dynamics CRM 2011 Report:

• Navigate to the reports grid 
• Highlight the report you want 
• Click Edit report 
• Click Actions-> Download Report 

This will give you the .rdl file.

This .rdl file can then be imported into BIDs and modified, after which you can import the modified report file back into CRM and use it in your solutions.