Disappearing Reports from a Dynamics CRM 2011 Solution

Roshan Mehta, 09 August 2012

I recently had to step in for a colleague by taking over a CRM deployment which went relatively smooth until I noticed that some reports were missing from the solution. I knew for a fact that the reports were part of the solution as I had performed some final testing only a few days before deployment. I then attempted to add the reports back into the solution only to find that the Add Components window was not picking up the custom reports.

It turns out that if you have a report defined to be viewable by an “Individual”, CRM doesn’t allow you to add the report as a solution component. If the report was already part of a solution, it will be removed automatically.  I guess this does make sense as you may create custom reports in your CRM implementation via the Report Wizard but you only want certain users in your organisation to view them. You certainly don’t want your administrator to deploy your reports as part of a solution!

Let’s take a look at this in action. I have two reports: “Top 5 Ice Cream Flavours” and “Top 10 Customers”. These are currently NOT part of any solution and are defined to be viewable by the entire organisation. I will be able to add these reports to a CRM solution.

The screenshot above shows that I have the ability to add the reports to my solution (I have not yet added them).

Now let’s change the reports so they are viewable by “Individuals”.

If I try to add these reports into my solution, they won’t appear in the Select solution components window.

Notice that the two reports are not available to add to the solution. The last thing I want to do is set them back to be viewable by “Organization” and actually add them to the solution.

Next, I will change them one last time to be viewable by “Individual” to show that they will be removed from the solution automatically.

To sum up, if you think some of your reports have randomly disappeared from a CRM solution, check that the reports have been modified so they are only viewable by “Individuals”.