TFS 2010 Report Errors

I received an email from a user telling me reports weren't working properly for her TFS 2010 project (keep in mind, I've found that a lot of TFS users don't seem to use reports in this division). When certain reports were run (not all of them though), this error would come up in the report area:

An error has occurred during report processing. (rsProcessingAborted)     
   Query execution failed for dataset 'dsTestData'. (rsErrorExecutingCommand)         
      For more information about this error navigate to the report server on the local server machine, or enable remote errors

Now there are multiple solutions to this, many of which available on the MSDN forums:

• Enable remote errors and find out what's throwing the error (I didn't get to this)
• Ensure the proper permissions are granted
• Make sure the data sources are set up properly, and that the data source types are
• TfsReportsDS -> Microsoft SQL Server
• TfsOlapReportDS -> Microsoft SQL Server Analysis Services
• (Sometimes these data source types are erroneously switched)

(A cool tool for checking the status of your TFS 2010 Warehouse and Analysis Services sync statuses: TFS 2010 Warehouse Service Utility from Benday.com)

There may be other issues as well; those above are ones I was in the process of exploring when I noticed something through SQL Server Management Studio...the SQL Server version number of the Analysis Server running the Tfs_Reports database (I believe Tfs_Analysis is the default name of this db); it was SQL Server 2005! SQL Server 2008 is needed in order run all reports properly.

Steps I took to fix:

• Have the SQL team install Analysis Services on an instance of SQL Server 2008 R2.
• Connect to the Analysis Services of that server
• Create a new empty database
• Through the TFS Administration Console, Reporting tab, "Stop Jobs"
• "Edit" -> Analysis Services tab
• Change server/instance settings (& database name if necessary), Test Connection
• Empty database will be filled with data when OK is clicked
• Waited a few minutes to ensure the database was updated properly, then "Start Rebuild"
• Caution: I've been told this can take up to a few hours. It only took a couple minutes for me.
• Using TFS 2010 Warehouse Service Utility, I told the server to Process Analysis to sync up the database with the TFS data.
• After the app told me the process was finished and successful, I went to the report site and tested the reports I saw were not working. Viola! All working with proper data.

Side note: the processes to update the analysis database and allow the cube to process may take some time. If the reports don't work right away, wait 10 minutes or so after completing the steps.

I hope you find this useful! Moral of the story: when tossed into an already-functioning production environment, take the time to check all of your systems make sure everything is up to date, or at least at minimum requirements for your system to work properly. :)

-Ryan