Reporting Services Subscriptions won't allow modification of the To: Field

Question

I have a little issue that is causing me a headache. Our Report Server is SQL Ent 2008 on a Win 2008 server. When users that have Report Browser permissions try to set up a report subscription the To: field is grayed out and pre-populated with their username. They cannot change this and it won't deliver to their email address which would be [email protected]. Any leads would be greatly appreciated.

Solution 1

"Site Settings".."Configure item-level role definitions".."Browser"

They can only "Manage individual subscriptions". SSRS won't allow the email address to be changed because they could put any stuff in there.

In BOL, Managing Subscriptions... and How to: Subscribe to a Report (Report Manager), which leads to Configuring a Report Server for E-Mail Delivery. This says:

Configuration Options for Setting the To: Field in a Message

User-defined subscriptions that are created according to the permissions granted by the Manage individual subscriptions task contain a pre-set user name that is based on the domain user account. When the user creates the subscription, the recipient name in the To: field is self-addressed using the domain user account of the person creating the subscription.

If you are using an SMTP server or forwarder that uses e-mail accounts that are different from the domain user account, the report delivery will fail when the SMTP server tries to deliver the report to that user.

To workaround this issue, you can modify configuration settings that allow users to enter a name in the To: field:

1. Open RSReportServer.config with a text editor.
2. Set SendEmailToUserAlias to False.
3. Set DefaultHostName to the Domain Name System (DNS) name or IP address of the SMTP server or forwarder.
4. Save the file.

Solution 2

I realize that this is on a 3 year old post (there was activity on it 5 months ago as of this posting though) but I found one other tid-bit that may be of use to others trying to get around this.

As part of the configuration file RSReportServer.config as mentioned in above answers found at installdir\Reporting Services\ReportServer\ there is a section of the file that you can add your domain name to that works in conjunction with the users alias.

The tag to edit is DefaultHostName as stated in Microsofts documentation this value works with the SendEmailToUserAlias tag when it's set to true.

The end user still has a grayed out To: field that shows their AD user alias, however when they setup a subscription to email a report, at execution time the SMTP server appends the specified domain (from the DefaultHostName tag) to the alias.

I didn't want to go with the work-a-round specified in the previous answer as I did not want end users to be able to specify any email address.

This worked for me in SSRS for SQL 2008 R2. Documentation from Microsoft here (http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms157273.aspx#bkmk_email_extension)

N.B. make sure you turn of the reporting services process before changing the file, after making and saving the changes, start the process back up.

Comments

[jgardner04]

gbn, Thanks for the lead. I will give that a shot tonight and report back.

[Davos]

According to the MSDN article on configuring "The report server will use the new settings automatically; you do not need to restart the service." msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms345234(v=sql.100).aspx Although, I haven't tested that. Can't hurt to restart.

[Akaino]

Thank you! This is still valid for 2016. Just that you know.

[techie007]

IMHO, this is the correct answer.