NAV 2013 R2 - How to Use Report Builder for Report Development.

Hi all,

Most of you may know how to enable Report Builder in NAV 2013 R2. If that is the case you are not required to read ahead.



With NAV 2013 R2 for Report Development a new option added i.e using Report Builder instead of Visual Studio.

I would prefer using Report Builder because -

- I already have Visual Studio 2005, 2008 & 2010 installed for Developing Report in NAV 2009, SP1, R2 and 2013.

- It takes hell lot of time to load the layout if system resources are not best.

- I am as comfortable with Report Builder as i am with visual studio.

I didn't installed Visual Studio 2012 and tried to open layout of Report.

I End up with an error message saying -

An error occurred when opening the report designer. A supported version of Visual Studio could not be found.

So it's trying to open layout in Visual studio 2012 but it didn't find it.

Now we need to point View - Layout Option to Report Builder instead of Visual Studio.

Here is how we can do it.

1. Navigate to Tools - Options.

2. Set Property Use Report Builder as YES.

Now lets try to open the layout of any report, it should open with Report Builder as shown below.

I Personally felt that it took less time then it used to take in Visual Studio. Most of the commonly requested report by client can be developed here.

There are some features that are not supported by Report Builder or i should say that features that are only supported by visual studio.

But for me it's OK to use report builder. Take your choice  (Visual Studio or Report Builder) and start developing reports in NAV 2013 R2.

Regards,
Saurav Dhyani
saurav-nav.blogspot.in