Microsoft Dynamics CRM uses SQL Server Reporting Services to generate reports for CRM data. If you have the need to modify or design your own reports, you will need to first make sure you have the software that helps you design and publish reports. The software I am referring to is the Microsoft Business Intelligence Development Studio aka BIDS.

Once you have it installed, you will be able to create SSRS reports. In order to however connect to Dynamics CRM, the BIDS software will need a method of connecting to your Dynamics CRM web service layer to authenticate and pull data from it. This piece is referred to as the Microsoft Dynamics Report Authoring Extension.

The CRM2011 version can be found on Microsoft's site with a quick search:
http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/search.aspx?q=CRM+2011+Report+Authoring

The install is pretty straightforward. I did however run into an issue with the following error message on my Win7 64 bit machine:

Setup cannot continue because a pending restart is required.

Here is what the error message looks like:

Microsoft Dynamics Error Message

This error appears to be a result of the presence of the RunOnce registry key. I removed it from the following location:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINESOFTWAREMicrosoftWindowsCurrentVersionRunOnce
Also since I am on a 64 bit machine, I did a registry find and removed it from the WOW64Node area in the registry as well.

Once the registry issue was cleared up, the installation proceeded and I was able to build my reports.

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