Problem
Reports Manager is the default report management portal for SQL Server Reporting Services (SSRS) reports. One of the basic standard requirements for any application that is deployed in an enterprise, is to brand the application. A corporate branding standard is generally a set of specifications for the company logo, color scheme, fonts and other appearance related items. Reports Manager is a web application which would also be expected to be branded as per the corporate branding specifications of an enterprise. In this tip we look at how to customize the Reports Manager portal.
Solution
Consider an enterprise has an installation of SQL Server Reporting Services (SSRS) and they intend to roll out the Reports Manager portal to the entire user base of the organization. The IT team has been asked to brand the application as per the company’s corporate theme including the corporate logo. Follow the below steps to brand the Reports Manager portal.
Step 1: Open the SQL Server Reporting Services Reports Manager portal in a web browser as shown below. It has the default theme applied.
Step 2: In order to brand the Reports Manager portal, one needs to create a brand package which will contain the entire set of specifications like logo, color specification and other settings.
Typically a brand package consists of the following files:
- metadata.xml – This file allows you to set the name of the brand package, and has a reference entry for both your colors.json and logo.png files.
- colors.json – When the brand package is uploaded, the server extracts the appropriate name/value pairs from the colors.json file and merges them with the master LESS stylesheet (brand.less). This LESS file is then processed and the resulting CSS file is served to the client. All colors in the stylesheet follow the six-character hexadecimal representation of a color. The file settings would look as shown below. You can watch a small video to learn more about the details of configuring the colors.json file here.
- logo.png – If you include a logo with your brand package, it will appear in the web portal in place of the name you set for the web portal in the Site Settings menu. The file you include for the logo must use the PNG file format. The file dimensions will be scaled once uploaded to the server. It should scale to around 290px by 60px. For this example I am using the Microsoft logo.
Step 3: Once you have all the files, create a zip file containing all the files. On the Reports Manager, click on Settings icon and select “Site Settings”. Select the branding tab, and upload the brand package created in Step 2.
Step 4: Once the brand package has been applied, the colors and logo specified in the brand package will be applied to the portal as shown below.
In this way one can brand the Reports Manager portal in SSRS as per the brand specifications of an enterprise.
Next Steps
- Download the sample brand package from here and modify the color scheme as well as the logo to create a customized brand theme for the SSRS Reports Manager portal.
- Check out all of the SQL Server Reporting Services resources.
