SharePoint 2010 template Document Libraries for Business Intelligence. (Part 2)

Welcome back for part two of the post about creating template document libraries for Business Intelligence environments. Last time we talked about how to create a document library to introduce the “hide in list view” of SSRS native mode within SharePoint 2010. This time I want to show how to create another useful template document library for a BI environment, a library for ad-hoc reporting with Report Builder 3.0.

Report builder 3.0 can be used for producing new and alter/update reports. You can design a report, specify where to get the data from, which data to get, and how to display the data. These reports can then be shared among other users that consume the data. Report builder 3.0 also provides the ability to share report parts and datasets among other Report builder users for reusability.

But because the default document libraries provided during the installation of SharePoint 2010 do not have the functionality to add the report builder specific content types. We will build a document library template that will contain the ad-hoc reporting content types of Report Builder 3.0 like “Data Source”, “Report Model” and “Report Builder Report”. So you do not have to manually add the functionality to every document library that you want to use for ad-hoc reporting.

This time the actions that need to be executed will start after creating a standard document library as shown in the first step of the actions in part 1 of this post.(that can be found here)

• After creating a standard document library we can start to add the desired functionality. The first step is to enable the management of the content types. Click on the new document library and navigate to the ribbon and select “library” and then click on “Library Settings” located on the right side of the ribbon.

  

• Navigate and click on the option “Advanced Settings” located under the heading “General settings”.

  

• This will open a list of options and the first option is to “allow management of content types”. Select “Yes” for this option and save the made changes for this document library.

  

• Now we have the ability to edit the settings for the content types. Navigate back to the document library settings, the section of the content types is available. Click on the option “add from existing site content types”.

  

• This will provide a new page in which the desired content types can be added. For this example we will add the “Report Builder Model”, “Report Builder Report” and “Report Data Source”. So select these content types and click on “add” and then on “OK”.

  

• After adding the content types you can delete any undesired content types and determine the default content type. (The default content type is the type that is used when the new document button is selected instead of selecting a specific type for the new document) 

  The result of adding the content types is that the document library now provides the functionality to add ad-hoc reporting items of report builder 3.0.

   

• The following steps are the same as in the first post and are there to make sure this functionality is stored in a template for reusability. Navigate to the document library settings and choose the option save document library as template.

  

• The option creates a template document library file (.stp). This file will be stored under the heading “List Templates” on the site settings page. This is also the location where you can upload any other created template document libraries.

  

• After uploading the template to the “list templates” of the site, it can be selected from the menu when creating a new document library. The created template for this demo is called “Ad-Hoc Reporting” and is shown as one of the options while creating a new document library.

  

Tip
It is also possible (and I even prefer) to develop the document library templates by using the new version of the tool called Microsoft SharePoint Designer 2010. (If desired I can provide screen shots of how to enable the content types of this demo in SharePoint Designer 2010 feel free to ask)

Important fact
After creating the document library based on a template, any changes to the created document library or to the template will not impact one or the other. So the document library templates are there to create an easy and fast starting point for your Business Intelligence environment with SharePoint 2010.

I hope you all enjoyed the posts about this topic and you now got an idea of how to create your own template document libraries for your BI environment. Please feel free to share your own ideas for interesting document library templates for a BI environment in the comment box beneath this blog.