This article will tell you about features of remote access to view reports and dashboards, Share command in the report designer. In addition, we’re going to give you helpful advice on setting files and access levels and discuss all the details of the process.

---

Introduction

Frequently, after creating a report or dashboard, some people don’t know how to use it further. For example, everything is clear if a report is intended only to display in a user application. Still, it’s entirely different when a ready report needs to be shown to other people. By the way, we’re not talking about specific people: they can be your subscribers on social networks or members of your team.

There can be many solutions to this question:

• report reference by email;
• sending a report by email;
• using third-party file storage, etc.

But today we’re going to tell you about Stimulsoft capabilities which allow you to solve the issue of remote access to view a report.Did you know that?
Cloud Service has been operating on the Stimulsoft platform for a long time. Every licensed user can use the cloud when the subscription is active. Also, you can acquire a separate subscription to the Stimulsoft Cloud Service. So, creating a report or dashboard, you just in a few steps can arrange remote access to view via a link, QR code, get a code to embed in an HTML page, or immediately publish a report on such social networks like Facebook and Twitter. To do that, you should select the Share command on the Ribbon tab or the File menu in the report designer and follow the instructions. There is a step-by-step instruction to set up remote access in the documentation, also, you can watch our new video tutorial.

---

Nuances

When arranging remote access, you should consider:

• Stimulsoft gives you capabilities of remote access only with using Stimulsoft Cloud service;
• According to the first point, you should have an active subscription to our Cloud Service or other programming products. If product subscription has expired, you can separately acquire the ability of using Cloud Service;
• All reports and dashboards are saved in the storage with the calculation mode Interpretation. Firstly, you should consider this when using events in a report. We described the interpretation mode in detail in this article.

These are the main moments you should consider when arranging remote access to view a report. The rest, generally, is not different from viewing a report in the viewer or on the Preview tab in the report designer. You should remember that when dashboard remote access, it’s recommended to add the dashboard mobile design, especially when a dashboard is viewed on mobile devices. More detailed information about this is here.

File setting

Before you start creating reports and sharing them, we want to remind you about two important things. First of all, you can define the access date of your report by the link, set a deadline for access. After this date, the report access level will be set to the «no access» mode. Besides, you can override the access expiration date or disable this option at any time.

Secondly, you can select document format, where the link will transfer a report. In other words, when a user follows the link, he will be able to see not the viewer window with a report and a PDF document or SVG-image. You should remember that if a web browser cannot open a particular file type, this file will be downloaded using the browser features. In addition, please note that a list of file types to convert a report or dashboard may vary.
Life hack!
You can add the «/» character to any report access link and specify the type file you want a report to be converted to. When following the link, a report will either be opened in a browser or loaded as a file using the browser features. For example, our shared dashboard converted to a PDF file.