The report you created in the previous exercise will reside in the Reports view of the Workplace area but will display only for you; most other users will not be able to see the report, unless they have system administrator or other security rights. By default, Microsoft Dynamics CRM prevents other users from being able to use your report at this point, although it does allow you to share the report with other users as you see fit. This is desirable because:
Many reports might be created by several different users with the Report Wizard. If all reports are immediately available to everyone, the number of reports in the list will grow quickly and may lead to confusion.
You might need a report for a very specific reason that other users will not need, and therefore there is no reason to share it.
Although the reports are not shared immediately, you can share them with other users in just a few steps.
In this exercise, you will share the report created in the previous section with a specific user and then make it available to all users in your Microsoft Dynamics CRM environment.
Note
USE your own Microsoft Dynamics CRM installation in place of the Adventure Works Cycle site shown in this exercise, and use a user account that has a security role with privileges to publish reports.
BE SURE TO use the Internet Explorer Web browser to navigate to your Microsoft Dynamics CRM Web site, if necessary, before beginning this exercise.
In the Workplace area, click Reports.
Select Active Opportunities by Owner without opening the report.
In the grid toolbar, click the More Actions button, and then select Sharing.
The Who Would You Like To Share The Selected Report With? sharing dialog box opens.
In the Common Tasks pane, click Add User/Team.
The Look Up Records dialog box opens.
Search for system users and select any user. Then add the user to the Selected Records area, and click OK.
The selected user displays in the sharing dialog box, with Read rights assigned by default. You can modify the sharing rights to suit your specific needs.
Click OK to save your sharing settings for the report.
The specified user can now see the report in the Reports view of the Workplace area.
Occasionally you might want to make the report available for every user rather than for specific users. Although you could select all users in the sharing dialog box, users that join your organization at a later time will not automatically have access to the report. In the next steps, you will make a report available to the entire organization so that even users who are added later are still able to access your report.
In the Reports view, select the Active Opportunities by Owner report without opening it, and in the grid toolbar, click Edit Report.
The Report form displays.
In the form toolbar, click the Actions button, and then select Make Report Available to Organization.
Troubleshooting
If the Make Report Available To Organization option does not appear in the Actions menu, you do not have rights to publish reports. Contact your system administrator about adding the Publish Reports privilege to your security role.
Your report is now available to the entire organization. You can also make the report a personal report again by following steps 7 and 8 and selecting Revert to Personal Report.
