Tag: SharePoint Server 2016

Configuring SSRS 2016 Integrated Mode with SharePoint 2016

Published March 9, 2016

SQL Server Reporting Services (SSRS) has experienced some very significant improvements in the 2016 version. As has been the case Since SQL Server 2005 SP1, it runs in either Native, or SharePoint Integrated mode. Integrated mode (the subject of this article) requires SharePoint 2016, and it is required for SharePoint to be able to render Power View reports in a browser. This article walks through the setup and configuration of SSRS 2016 Integrated mode in a SharePoint 2016 farm.

The process for setting up SSRS in Integrated mode is little changed with 2016. The process consists of installing the bits on the SharePoint server(s), creating and configuring the service applications, deploying the solution, and configuring document libraries to contain report elements.

Installing SSRS 2016 on Sharepoint Servers

When running in integrated mode, SSRS MUST be installed on a server that is part of the SharePoint farm. This only makes sense because it is deployed as a SharePoint Service Application. Unfortunately, the fact that is distributed as part of the SQL Server media causes confusion for some.

As of this writing, SSRS must be installed on a SharePoint 2016 that is configured in a Custom Role. MinRoles are new to SharePoint 2016, and SSRS does not support any other role than the Custom role. If your server is not running the Custom role, installation will succeed, but SSRS will be shut down by the roles engine during the next maintenance window. In order to check which role your server is using, and to possibly change it, you can use either PowerShell or Central Admin. With Central Admin, the setting is found in “System Settings”, under the “Servers” category as “Convert server role in this farm”.

Selecting this option opens the role configuration dialog, which is quite simple.

If the role is already set to Custom, you are good to go. Otherwise, it can be changed with the “New Role” drop down dialog.

Once the correct role is in place, SSRS can be installed. The first step is to mount the SQL Server media on a SharePoint server, and run the standard SQL Server installer. SSRS Integrated mode is part of the Shared Features collection (ie no SQL instances are installed), and it consists of two parts.

The first option, “Reporting Services – SharePoint” is the actual SSRS Service application. This should be installed on any SharePoint servers allocated to doing the heavy lifting of rendering reports – the “app” servers. The second option “Reporting Services Add-in …” is used to connect a SharePoint server to an instance of the SSRS Service application. This should be installed on any SharePoint front-end servers at a minimum, but I recommend installing it on all of them as a convenience.

After a few “Next”s and “OK”s, the SSRS bits should be installed on a server. The next step is to Create and configure the Shared Service Application itself.

Creating the SSRS Shared Service Application

Once the bits are installed, an SSRS Service application is created in the same manner as any other service application. From the Service Applications interface in Central Administration, select “New” from the ribbon, and then select “SQL Server Reporting Services Service Application”.

You will then be presented with a configuration dialog where you will need to specify a name for the service and a few other configuration parameters.

I typically use the same application pool as most of the other SharePoint services, and I always change the name of the database. The default database name contains a GUID, and nobody likes GUIDs in their database names. The SSRS will actually create 3 databases, one with the name specified, and two others that use this name as a base. Also, if you’ll be using other Reporting Services databases on the same SQL Server – for Native mode as an example, it’s a good idea to name it so that it’s easily distinguishable. In this example “Integrated” is added to the end.

Scrolling down, you’ll see options for activating the SSRS features in all of the farm’s site collections. The features can be activated from the site collections as well; this is simply a convenience.

Once saved, additional SSRS configuration items can be configured, and should be. At the very least, the subscription options should be configured, and the encryption key should be backed up, but these operations are not essential for basic setup, so they will not be done here. The next operation will be to enable a document library for SSRS reports.

Creating a Reporting Library

Enabling a document library in SharePoint for SSRS reports is unchanged from the past several versions. The first step is to add a new document library by going into “All Content” for a site, and selecting “Add an App”. You may be tempted to select “Reports” or “Report Document Library” at this point – don’t. The “Reports” library template that ships with SharePoint 2016 and prior contains content types for creating Excel documents in prior versions, web pages – that’s it. It has nothing to do with SSRS reports.

Select a Simple document library, give it a name (something like SSRS Reports, or SSRS library), and let it be created. Then, go into the library settings, click Advanced settings, and enable the use of content types. Next, add the SSRS content types to the library by clicking “Add from existing site content types”, selecting the “SQL Server Reporting Services Content Types” category, and then selecting “Data Connections” and “SSRS Report”. Unless you have a specific need, do not add the “Report Builder Model” content type. Models are a deprecated artifact and exist only for backward compatibility.

Once added, click OK, and you will be returned to library settings. At this point I like to remove the “Documents” content type from the list to restrict it to reports, but that will depend on your requirements. At this point you should be able to create a new report or data source by selecting new in the library’s ribbon and choosing the appropriate item. This library can now be used to store reports.

The final step is to enable and confirm support for Power View.

Power View Support

Power View support in SharePoint 2016 is provided through SSRS Integrated mode (and ONLY through SSRS Integrated mode). It is manifested in 3 different areas:

Creating and viewing a standalone Power View report from a data connection
Creating and viewing a standalone Power View report from an Excel workbook in a PowerPivot gallery
Using a browser to view a Power View report contained in an Excel workbook

1. Creating and viewing a standalone Power View report from a data connection

Standalone Power View reports utilize BISM (BI Semantic Model) connections. BISM connections can be added to a SharePoint library by adding the “BI Semantic Model Connection” content type to the library – this would normally be done for a connections library. A BISM connection can also be created through an SSRS data source by selecting “Microsoft BI Semantic Model for Power View” as its data source type.

Creating a Power View report from either connection type follows the same process. In the library, click the ellipsis for the connection, and then the second ellipsis. From there, select “Create Power View Report”

Provided that Silverlight is available on the client, Power View should launch, and you should be able to build a report on the underlying data.

2. Creating and viewing a standalone Power View report from an Excel workbook in a PowerPivot gallery

Creating a Power View report is significantly simpler. Once SSRS is installed, it adds a small Power View icon to every workbook that is in a Power Pivot gallery.

Simply click on the icon, Power View will launch, and you can build a report on the data model that is contained in the workbook. There is however one additional step necessary for this to work. Because the data model is actually stored in the SSAS PowerPivot mode server(s), and it is SSRS (remember, Power View is part of SSRS) that is working with the model (not OOS), the service account for SSRS needs to be added to the Administrators list on the SSAS PP mode server(s). In our case, the service account is NAUTILUS\spServices.

3. Using a browser to view a Power View report contained in an Excel workbook

Power View reports that have been embedded in an Excel workbook require no additional configuration, they should “just work” once SSRS is configured. However, as with the PowerPivot gallery, SSRS needs access to the data models, and therefor its service account needs to be in the administrators list (see above).

Wrapping Up

Once installed and configured, you will have access to the new HTML5 based rendering engine and new visuals available to SSRS 2016. You will also be ale to work with your existing Power View investments. However, you will not be able to use the new mobile reports, Reporting Dashboards, Parameters customization, and Power BI integration. For that, you’ll need a Native mode SSRS instance, and yes, it can be connected to SharePoint. That will be the topic of an upcoming article.

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Using PowerPivot for SharePoint with SharePoint 2016

Published March 8, 2016

While the capabilities previously provided with Excel Services have been moved to Office Online Server (OOS) in the 2016 version of SharePoint, PowerPivot for SharePoint (PP4SP) has not. PP4SP remains a SharePoint service application in the 2016 edition of the product. This service application is responsible for providing the automatic data refresh capability for PowerPivot for SharePoint enabled workbooks. As an aside, it can also refresh connected workbooks, as I discuss here. Given that the rendering engine now exists on a separate server, there are a few additional steps to perform, and this article aims to walk through them.

Basic Installation

Prior to setting up PowerPivot for SharePoint, you’ll need a SharePoint farm that has been enabled for PowerPivot workbooks, as I have previously outlined here. The Add-In is available from Microsoft here.

Installing is a simple matter of downloading the add-in and running setup. You’ll be presented with a straightforward dialog box with 4 options.

This should be installed on every SharePoint server in the farm, whether or not it will run the Service application. Technically the first option is not required for front end web servers, but it is small, and I like to keep my options open. After clicking next, the bits will be installed.

Like SharePoint, once the bits are installed, they must be configured. This is done through the PowerPivot for SharePoint configuration tool, which the earlier setup installed. It should be available from the application list on the server. It works much the same as it did with earlier versions of PP4SP and SharePoint. Run it and you’ll be prompted for the installation type. Select “Configure or repair..” and click OK. Next, you’ll be presented with the configuration detail dialog. The dialog contains a number of configuration nodes, which drive a series of PowerShell scripts that are used to perform the configuration (tip – click on the Script tab to see the scripts in question). The exclamation point icon indicates that parameters need to be supplied.

The first node is mandatory – Configure or Repair.

Here, you enter the credentials of the user that can perform the configuration – I normally use the user that was used to configure SharePoint in the first place – spSetup in my demo environments. This is the only step that is critical. However, I find it to be good practice to change the name of the Service application and database.

The default values begin with “Default Power Pivot…” and the database contains a GUID as part of its name. When searching alphabetically for PowerPivot, I tend to look under P not D, so I remove the word default from both, the GUID from the database, and further change the database name to conform with naming conventions. Finally, it’s a good idea to check the Site Collection that will be activated.

The configuration tool will activate the PowerPivot solution in one site collection by default. It can be activated later in others, but it’s worth starting off on the right foot.

Click the “validate” button, and if all of the indicators are green, go ahead and complete the configuration. Once configured, no further Central Admin work should be necessary, at least not at this point.

PowerPivot Gallery

A PowerPivot gallery is not required. All of the PowerPivot for SharePoint features can be used in a regular document library, but the gallery centralizes things and makes these features more discoverable. It should be noted that just as with SharePoint 2013, the PowerPivot gallery is a customized document library that uses Silverlight to display its contents. This dependency on Silverlight means that in order to use it, workstations must have Silverlight installed, and neither Google Chrome, nor Microsoft Edge browsers will support it.

To create a new PowerPivot Gallery, navigate to the site contents of the target SharePoint site, and select “Add an app”. Select the PowerPivot gallery and give it a name. If you don’t see PowerPivot Gallery as an option, you may need to enable the PowerPivot Feature for Site collection in the Site Collection features list. Once added, upload a PowerPivot enabled workbook. This workbook should contain a data model where the data was imported directly into PowerPivot (not via Power Query). Once uploaded, after a few moments, the thumbnails from the workbook objects should show up in the gallery. It should be possible to interact with the workbook, as PP4SP is not required for that, but the two (or 3 depending on whether or not SSRS has been installed) icons on the right of the workbook provide access to PP4SP capability.

In order to set up scheduled refresh, click on the calendar icon (The Excel icon is for using Excel as a data source – see below). This opens up the data refresh history for this workbook. To configure it, click on the “Configure Schedule link”. On the configuration screen, select the enable check box, enter the desired schedule, and the credentials needed to connect to the source data. For testing purposes it is more deterministic to explicitly enter credentials here, but refresh supports a “refresh account” (configured via the Secure Store Service), or any Secure Store Service credentials. Also, selecting “Also refresh as soon as possible” will immediately force a refresh cycle, which will begin within 5 minutes of saving, and is useful for testing.

Once complete, open the refresh history for the workbook, and you should see either a stopwatch icon, indication a refresh is in progress, a green check mark, indicating successful completion, or a red x, indicating failure.

One thing should be noted – data models created by using Power Query in Excel will always fail – this is true as of March 2016. Power Query refresh has been stated as a feature for PowerPivot for SharePoint 2016, but as of this writing, it has not yet been included.

Workbook as a Data Source – Kerberos Enablement

The URL of a workbook that contains a data model can be used in a connection string in another workbook, and PowerPivot for SharePoint can intelligently route that connection to the backing SSAS PP Mode server. To the consuming workbook, it looks just like a regular SSAS server.

In prior versions of SharePoint and PP4SP, using a workbook as a data source “just worked”, because the service and the workbook were all on the same server. With OOS, the server is on a different server. OOS needs to connect to the source workbook (the one with the data model) with the credentials of the consuming user, which means that for this to work, Kerberos Constrained Delegation (KCD) must be configured between OOS and SharePoint.

To be sure, you only need to configure KCD if you wish to use Excel files as a data source. If not, this step can be safely skipped.

You need to allow the computer account for the OOS server to delegate credentials to the account running the HTTP service for the SharePoint application that contains the workbooks to be used as data sources. In the example below, the OOS Server is NAUTILUS2016OOS, the service account is NAUTILUS\spApps, and the application is http://home.nautilus.local. This PowerShell can be run on any Domain Controller server.

$allowedPrincipals = @()
$allowedPrincipals += Get-ADComputer -Identity NAUTILUS2016OOS

# Set the delegation property on the application pool identity.
Set-ADUser spApps -PrincipalsAllowedToDelegateToAccount $allowedPrincipals

# Set the Service Principal Names for the application pool identity.
SetSPN -S HTTP/home NAUTILUS\spApps
SetSPN -S HTTP/home.nautilus.local NAUTILUS\spApps

Once successfully configured, it should be possible to use Excel files that contain data models as a data source for other Excel files. To create a new one, click the Excel icon beside the data refresh history icon in the PowerPivot gallery.

Wrapping Up

One other feature requires further configuration to work, and that is the PowerPivot Administration dashboard. Security constraints now prevent the use of Central Administration as a container which means that the dashboard must be set up in a regular site collection. This requires Server to Server (S2S) trust to be configured. Given that this is not a user facing feature, it’s out of scope for this article, but details on how to do it can be found in the Deploying SQL Server 2016 PowerPivot and Power View in SharePoint 2016 document.

Setting up PowerPivot for SharePoint will still not give you the ability to render Power View reports in a browser whether they are created standalone, or in an Excel workbook. For that, it is necessary to set up SQL Server Reporting Services (SSRS) in SharePoint mode, as Power View rendering is part of SSRS. That will be the topic of an upcoming article.

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