Unlock your SharePoint Data with Reporting Services Power

Reporting Services Integration

Enesys RS Data Extension extends Reporting Services so that you can benefit from all the features provided by Microsoft's platform.

You don't have to learn an entire new tool to get all your data. In fact, all your Reporting Services expertise and knowledge can be used with Enesys RS Data Extension.

The only thing that is specific to Enesys RS Data Extension is the query side of things. And to get your life easier, we are providing a Query Designer that is completely integrated to Business Intelligence Development Studio.

And if this is the first time you are using Reporting Services, just know that most of what you will learn will be completely reusable for building reports using different data sources.

Integrated Visual Query Designer

Enesys RS Data Extension Visual Query Designer makes it easy to build sophisticated queries directly from within Microsoft Business Intelligence Development Studio.

Because Enesys RS Data Extension offers so many different features (query SharePoint lists, roll-up lists in an entire site collection, query SQL or Oracle databases, and many more features), the Visual Query Designer provides the necessary user interface that makes it unecessary to remember every command and configuration settings.

It provides everything you need to build and test your queries with a few mouse clicks.

Innovative Query Approach to Match SharePoint Features

What makes SharePoint lists powerful is that they are not plain tables: you can easily manage events, tasks, issues, etc. At the core of Enesys RS Data Extension is a Query Engine that understands SharePoint concepts and features.

Enesys RS Data Extension will let you deal with all those specific SharePoint features. You can retrieve item versions, multi-value fields, folders, etc... You can also aggregate items from an entire site collection.

Besides the numerous SharePoint features that are exposed through our query engine, we have taken a specific approach so that you can handle complex queries and merge SharePoint data with external data. In fact, you can get multiple result sets (from SharePoint lists, SQL Server tables, XML) and use SQL SELECT Syntax to manipulate your data into a dataset that you will use within your reports.

Full featured Reporting Services extension

Enesys RS Data Extension is a full featured Reporting Services extension. It supports Reporting Services credentials defined at the data source level.

Report's single-value and multi-value parameters are also fully supported at the query level so that you don't have to retrieve unnecessary large number of items from your SharePoint server.

Support SharePoint Lists Features

Get folders, items or both

Folders are not limited to document libraries. You can create folders within any list. The standard "Discussion" list for instance handles each discussion using a folder.

With Enesys RS Data Extension, you can limit items retrieval to a specific folder (no need to retrieve all the list items and to filter afterward). And because you can use a report parameter to specify the desired folder, you can handle most complex scenarios. For instance, you may want to get all the replies from a specific discussion, or you may want to get data from a list where each folder represents a year.

For maximum flexibility, you can also retrieve items in all possible ways. You can get items (and optionally sub-folders) in a specific folder or recursively in all sub-folders.

Include Item Versions information in your reports

Versioning is a great feature of SharePoint to keep track of changes within lists or document libraries. The "Issue Tracking" list uses versioning to keep a history of changes.

By letting you retrieve Item Version, Enesys RS Data Extension lets you display the whole history of any issue or project task. It also lets you analyze specific aspects of your tasks or issues: for instance the number of days between each modification.

Multi-value fields

SharePoint allows some fields to handle multiple values: Lookup, Choice and Person or Group.

Enesys RS Data Extension allows you to break down multiple values into single values. This approach lets you have reports that can display information grouped on any multi-value field.

InfoPath Forms

InfoPath Forms store their data in an XML file within an InfoPath Form Library. You can promote InfoPath fields at the SharePoint level as long as those fields are not repeated. However one of InfoPath strengths is to allow for complex forms with repeated elements.

Enesys RS Data Extension explicit support for InfoPath Form Libraries lets you select any field in your InfoPath Form. And, as you can expect, it will return multiple items per form when you select repeated fields.

Using this feature, you can display your form using multiple alternative layouts and, extend your InfoPath Form data analysis to a more detailed level.

Survey Lists

Survey lists store data in a very specific way. Even though Enesys RS Data Extension lets you retrieve data from a Survey list like with any SharePoint list, it is challenging to build a meaningful report out of the raw data that is returned from such a list.

For that reason, Enesys RS Data Extension provides a specific command that returns Survey list data in a format that can be used for creating great looking reports.

And if you don't have time to come up with a report of your own, just use our generic report that mimics the look and feel of SharePoint Graphical Summary view.

Recurring Events, Meeting instances, ...

Enesys RS Data Extension also supports Recurring events, Meeting instances,...

If you are using SSRS 2005 (as opposed to SSRS 2008), you will also appreciate the possibility to strip HTML. Not only HTML tags will be removed because they would be displayed as plain text, but Enesys RS Data Extension will make its best effort to format the data nicely without the use of HTML tags.

Advanced Features

Aggregate Lists from an Entire Site Collection

The need of rolling up lists within an entire site collection is a common scenario. For instance, you may have one site by project but still want to get all your project tasks analyzed globally and displayed in a single report.

Enesys RS Data Extension provides a command that will let you aggregate lists in an entire site collection. There is no need to update your query each time you create a new sub-site. Items from new sites are automatically retrieved and displayed within your report.

Because Enesys RS Data Extension respects SharePoint permissions, a user will only get items from the sites he has the necessary permissions, when running a report using Integrated Security.

Advanced Data Manipulation

In order to let you manipulate your SharePoint data in all possible ways, Enesys RS Data Extension comes with an innovative approach to query.

It lets you execute multiple commands that return data from SharePoint lists or other sources (SQL Server or XML). In order to make sense of this data, Enesys RS Data Extension lets you manipulate the data resulting from those commands using SQL SELECT Syntax.

This approach is extremely flexible and offers advanced manipulation possibilities:

• Join multiple SharePoint lists (or InfoPath forms and document libraries)
• Combine SharePoint data and SQL Server data
• Aggregate data from multiple site collections

Mix SharePoint lists with SQL Server data, Oracle data or XML data

Because it is extremely easy to create lists of event, tasks or issues, more and more users will use SharePoint to track (or document) items that live in a database or an ERP.

Enesys RS Data Extension lets you query over SharePoint lists, SQL Server and Oracle databases. Thanks to its advanced data manipulation features, you will be able to combine SharePoint, SQL Server and Oracle data exactly the same way you can mix multiple SharePoint lists: join, union, ...

In order to offer even more possibilities, Enesys RS Data Extension lets you also query any URL that returns XML data. Using this approach you can not only integrate data from existing web services but also create your own restful service to combine data from very specific data sources.

Specify List or Site using Report Parameters

Your report is not tied to a specific List or SharePoint Site. Enesys RS Data Extension lets you use Report Parameters to specify your SharePoint list name and/or the relative site URL of the list.

That means you can build generic reports that can be used with multiple lists or sites as long as the list has all the fields specified in your query.

As an example of this approach, you can refer to our ready-made reporting solution that lets you build reports from any Survey list.

Credentials, SharePoint Permissions and Authentication

Credentials and SharePoint Permissions

One of the strength of SharePoint is that it brings permissions management at the Business Manager level. Enesys RS Data Extension respects SharePoint permissions. It will retrieve data using the Credentials settings you have configured at the data source level.

By using Windows Authentication Integrated Security, you can ensure that the user running the report will only get data for which he has the necessary SharePoint permissions.

On the other hand, by using Stored Credentials, you can allow users to execute specific reports that will display data from SharePoint sites or lists for which they do not have permissions.

Claims, Forms and Windows Authentication

Enesys RS Data Extension supports SharePoint Web Applications configured with Claims (SharePoint 2010 only) and Classic authentication. Both Windows and Forms-Based authentication types are supported.

When reporting over SharePoint Forms-Based web sites, you just need to set a single property in the connection string.