Actions are a powerful feature in SQL Server that allow for customized browsing and drilling of data for end-users. They are events that users can raise while accessing cube data, and are commonly used in cube browsers like Excel. Actions can be triggered when a user clicks on a specific member, level, dimension, cells, or even the entire cube itself.

In this blog post, we will focus on the Reporting action, which allows users to generate a report with detailed information about a specific product where the sales amount is greater than 1000 in the cube browser analysis.

Creating a Reporting Action

To create a reporting action, follow these steps:

1. Open SQL Server Data Tools and navigate to the Analysis Services project.
2. Go to Actions and click on “New Reporting Action”.
3. Specify the name of the action and choose the target type as attribute members, as we want to create the action on members of an attribute.
4. Specify the target object of your report action. This would be the dimension or attribute on which you want the report to appear. In our case, it is the product name.
5. Define the condition on which you want the report link to appear. This is an optional feature. For example, you can specify a condition to check if the sales amount is greater than 10,000, so that the link appears only for those products where the condition is met.
6. Specify the server name on which the report is present, the report path, and the report format in which you want the report to appear.
7. Optionally, specify any parameters that need to be passed to the report. The parameter name should match the one defined in the report.
8. Deploy your solution and open the cube browser.
9. Click on the “Analyze in Excel” button to open the cube in Excel.
10. Create an analysis that shows product names and their sales amount.
11. Right-click on a product where the sales amount is greater than 10000, and you will see the reporting action link. Click on it to be taken to your Reporting Services report.
12. Clicking on the link will redirect you to the URL of the report.

By following these steps, you can easily launch reports from a SQL Server cube browser. Similarly, you can also open web pages, run applications, and perform a number of other tasks using actions.

Thank you for reading this blog post. If you have any questions or need further assistance, please feel free to leave a comment below.

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