Bulk switch from one SSRS report format to another in Print management setup – Part 7 of 8 
Tags: D365FO, Data entity, Free Edition, Print management, Video 
In this tutorial, we will cover the scenario where we need to switch in bulk from using one SSRS report format to a different one in Print management setup. Imagine that you are using many customer or vendor specific Print management settings configured to use the built-in SSRS report format (e.g. PurchPurhaseOrder.Report). In the meantime, you customized this report and the new one should be used instead, e.g. DocPurchPurchaseOrder.Report in case that the customization is done via SSRS, or even Purchase order (Excel) if you switched from SSRS to Configurable Business Documents in Electronic Reporting.
What we are going to do here first is to export to Excel all these vendor specific Print management settings, by using the filter with Purchase order selected as Document type and Vendors as Print management node type, for one or multiple companies. Then we will change the value of the 2 columns in Excel which are bound to the Report format field in Print management setup: FORMATNAME and FORMATDESCRIPTION.
When you are using only SSRS, these 2 columns have the same value representing the SSRS report design name, e.g. PurchPurchaseOrder.Report. In order to switch to another SSRS report design, you can manually enter the new SSRS report design you customized in both columns, e.g. DocPurchPurchaseOrder.Report.
However, if you want to switch to an Electronic Reporting Format (i.e. Configurable Business Document), the FORMATNAME column will also contain a GUID of the target ER Format. Therefore, it’s easier to select the new report format Purchase order (Excel) in Print management setup in D365Fo for at least one vendor to get it exported into Excel, so you can copy it to all other vendors.
We will do exactly that, and then copy the value from the FORMATNAME column of the first vendor to the same column bound to all other vendors (i.e. rows). Afterwards, we will repeat the process for the FORMATDESCRIPTION column, which actually contains the text shown to a user in Print management setup: Purchase order (Excel).
After the import of the modified Excel back to D365FO, we will check Print management settings of the exported and then imported back vendors, and see that the updating of the target report format in bulk via Excel succeeded.
- We can export vendor specific Print management settings to Excel and change the value of the FORMATNAME and FORATDESCRIPTION columns to the new report format.
- We need to handle the FORMATNAME column in the special way if we are switching to an ER Format.
- After importing the changed Excel back to D365FO, the new report format will appear as the target report format in Print management settings for all exported vendors.
NEXT (Part 8 of 8): Learn how to switch in bulk from SSRS report design to Docentric default template >>