Migrating Folder Structure in Report Manager from one SSRS server to another

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Migrating Folder Structure in Report Manager from one SSRS server to another

rsiem

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June 22, 2021 at 3:46 pm

#3899361
We are in the process of converting 500+ reports from our old reporting system to SSRS on 2021 SQL and in SSRS Native mode.
We have started to create a folder and multiple sub-folder structure in our Development server SSRS Report Manager.
We have 3 primary questions:
1. Is there a limit or constraint on how many parent and sub-folders are allowed in 2012 SSRS Report Manager?
2. Is there a limit to the number of levels deep that are allowed for folders in 2012 SSRS Report Manager?
3. Is there a SQL script or process to copy an entire folder hierarchy from our Development 2012 Report Manager to our Production2012 Report Manager?
Any advice anyone can provide would be appreciated.
Ron Siem

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Mr. Brian Gale SSC-Insane Points: 24692 More actions · Answer 1

Question 1 - As far as I am aware, three is no limit on the SSRS side, but there is a limit in how long the URL can be - 2,048 characters. As SSRS is a web-based tool, that means the full URL must be less than 2048 characters as well.

But if it works on your dev environment, it should work on live unless your dev URL is shorter than live (such as "http://dev.corp.com" for development server and "http://livereportingserver.corp.com" for live, then you MAY run into problems. But just keep the URL under 2048 characters and you should be fine.

Question 2 - Now, Visual Studio, and I expect report builder, still has the limitation where you can't create subfolders, so working with subfolders can be annoying if they get very deep as it is hard to organize it in Visual Studio.

Question 3 - there are powershell scripts for this (you can google them... there are various ones out there). As far as I know, there is no TSQL for this. There are also tools available for this. This website has a LOT of good information on it:

https://www.sqlshack.com/migrating-ssrs-content-powershell/

I recommend the DBATOOLS powershell module for this task as it is supported (unlike some of the tools they suggest), and gives limitations and suggestions for each method. Pick the one that you are most comfortable with AND that you can live with the limitations of (such as losing history). I strongly encourage you to read through the whole article before copy-pasting some of the scripts OR downloading tools as it has a lot of good information in it.

The above is all just my opinion on what you should do.
As with all advice you find on a random internet forum - you shouldn't blindly follow it. Always test on a test server to see if there is negative side effects before making changes to live!
I recommend you NEVER run "random code" you found online on any system you care about UNLESS you understand and can verify the code OR you don't care if the code trashes your system.