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I am trying to find a way on how to disable the "Include report" option from the Email subscription page. As per our requirement, users will create their own subscriptions for specific reports. But as a DBA we would like to control their ability to include the report in the email. Rather they just need to get a link of the report to their email addresses. As it showed in this screenshot

The end goal is, I want to allow my users to setup their own subscriptions which sends them a link to the report but not to include the report itself due to PII and PHI. I am using SSRS 2016 Native mode.

Any ideas or solutions are greatly appreciated.

Lucky
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  • This is purely an untested idea . When a report subscription is created, an entry for the same is created in the Subscriptions table in the reportserver db. One of the column is [ExtensionSettings]. An XML column with the Include Report value set to TRUE. You could perhaps programatically set to FALSE via some sort of trigger on a new Subscription creation or modification perhaps? – Harry Feb 22 '21 at 01:28
  • Thanks Harry for your inputs. Since these subscriptions are created by the users directly, are you saying after they create their subscriptions as a DBA, I need to update that setting for each subscription as per their subscription ID? – Lucky Feb 22 '21 at 19:18
  • Yes and no. Yes you have to update the setting, but no, you don't have to manually do it. Set a trigger on the table that does that for you automaticaly. – Harry Feb 22 '21 at 19:38
  • Okay thanks. I have updated the 'Include Report' parameter value to False on the ExtensionSettings column and I can see the checkbox was deselected. But the problem is the user is still be able to go back select that field again. I got your point that whenever there is a modification on a particular report subscription a trigger can set it back to False. But I am looking for to disable that field automatically. Unfortunately, we can't do that in the ReportServer configuration file. – Lucky Feb 22 '21 at 23:54
  • I found the below link which explains by modifying the Java script from the source code. But I am not able to find that aspx page folder. (https://social.msdn.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/0e952666-acff-4d10-bb3f-cd0c1bcec19a/disable-quotinclude-linkquot-option-in-report-subscription?forum=sqlreportingservices) – Lucky Feb 22 '21 at 23:55
  • I'm pretty sure it only applies to older versions of SSRS (the aspx page folder) – Harry Feb 23 '21 at 01:13
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    yeah seems like it. Reaching out Microsoft's assistance on this. I will update once I get work around for this. Thanks again for your inputs. – Lucky Feb 23 '21 at 18:15

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Microsoft provided us two solutions for this. One of them was what Harry suggested in his comments- creating a trigger to update the ExtensionSettings column on Subscriptions table. Which is not supported by the Microsoft.

The only solution which is more or less official by the Microsoft is- in the Reportserver config file, we need to comment out all the rendering extensions except HTML4.0, HTML5, and RPL. After commenting out all the rendering extensions, when we setup a new subscription, everything will be greyed out for 'include report' because there are no attachment supported rendering extensions available. Since there are no include report options, the Include Link is forced by default. I tested this on our dev environment and it worked perfectly fine.

The only possible draw back with this option is that after the recipient follows the link he/she received to the Report in the web browser, they have no options available to export to pdf, etc. Which is actually a good thing in our scenario.

Image-Commenting out Rendering Extensions-Screenshot

Thanks.

Lucky
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