Luckily, another option exists with a product called Microsoft Report Builder 3.0. Available as a free download from Microsoft, Report Builder 3.0 features a report-authoring interface, which is similar to that of Microsoft Office 2010. Easy to use wizards, as well as familiar design, format and layout tools provide business users with a means for authoring meaningful customized reports quickly.

A “Getting Started” window offers wizards for building Charts, Maps, Tables and Matrix style reports. Additionally there are simple dialogs to help walk you through connecting to your data and to help guide you through the query building process. The formatting tools are very similar to those found in Microsoft Word. Within a matter of only a few minutes, you will be able to build useful reports that can be imported and used in your Workgroups suite.

If you haven’t tried building a report for your system but you’d like to, I would recommend downloading and giving Report Builder 3.0 a try. It does require SQL Server 2008 R2 and it is available for free from Microsoft’s web site.

If you prefer to learn through watching video, there are quite a few examples and tutorials on YouTube related to Report Builder 3.0 that also explain some of the new features and help acclimate you to the product.

Watch a short YouTube Video.