Show or Hide Reports for Certain Users Dynamics CRM 2011

Paul Nieuwelaar, 14 August 2012

If you have ever created a custom report in Dynamics CRM 2011, whether it was an SSRS (SQL Server Reporting Services) report, or just a report created using the built in Report Wizard, you will have configured the report to be viewable to either the Individual (Owner) or the Organization (Everyone). This option is set to Individual by default, but is often set as Organization so that any users can run the report.

However sometimes we have custom reports that only certain users, such as managers, should be able to run. In this case we should set the reports to be ‘Individual’, and assign the report to a specific User or Team that will have access to run the report.

By doing this, only the user or team assigned to the report will be able to see and run it. Well, not exactly…  Even though setting it to Individual seems like only you (the Owner) will see it, it will actually still be visible to run by any users that have Organization Read access to Reports in their security roles (which is none of the main default security roles, apart from Admin of course).

Note: The ‘Organization’ viewable reports will still be visible by users even if they don’t have Organization read access to Reports.

If we need to show the report to selected users that are not unique to a team, we can simply share the report with each user:

One thing to note with Individual Reports; like Personal Views and Charts, Individual Reports cannot be added into a solution. If you need to export an ‘Individual’ report you will need to make it Organization viewable again, and then after deploying your solution update the report on the target system to make it Individual again. At this point you would also need to assign and share it with any users if necessary.