From the Microsoft Dynamics CRM Blogs: Personalizing Reports; Activity Reporting; CRM 2011 Dashboard Examples; Data Import - Setting Primary Contact

Personalizing Reports for Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online: This blog post, brought to you by the Microsoft Dynamics CRM team, focuses on the reporting capabilities of Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011.

According to the blog, in on-premise deployments, customizers can create SSRS (SQL Server Reporting Services) reports using SQL or CRM's querying language, FetchXML. However, in online deployments, customizers have to use FetchXML to create SSRS reports for improved security and performance. The CRM team suggests ISVs create reports using FetchXML to reach the most customers.

This blog also offers information about commons patterns that could applied when writing reports using FetchXML or converting SQL based reports to FetchXML based reports including the RDLHelper; CRM report parameters; personalization; language; date and time; and number and currency.

The blog post concludes with the following:

Next Steps: The general pattern that has been applied is to use CRM report parameters as arguments to VB script methods to personalize reports. Only a small slice of CRM report parameters and VB script methods have been examined in this blog. Please contribute to and empower the CRM community by blogging about any other uses you have found. The next step is to brush up on FetchXML patterns and start writing your own custom FetchXML reports for Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online.

Best Practices for Activity Reporting In Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011: The folks over at Customer Effective have posted some information on the