title: SSRS export to PDF automatically from standard, built-in interface
body: <p>Our organization has many custom SSRS reports that we run from SSRS's built-in interface - where a user can see and set the parameters and click 'View Report' to generate the default HTML rendering.  Then the little toolbar appears allowing them to export the report to PDF, Excel, etc.</p>
  
  <p>I know that many organizations write their own report generation interfaces, which then pass the parameters to SSRS and return the report in the desired format. Before we explore that route, we would like to see what we can do by 'hacking' the built-in interface.</p>
  
  <p>The advantages of sticking with SSRS's built-in interface, is that we can write reports that have parameters whose values/selections are generated depending on previously selected parameters.  For instance, if I have two report parameters - 'School Year' and 'School Name', I can make the drop-down selection list for 'School Name' change depending on what the user selects for the first parameter of 'School Year'; and I can do this inside of SSRS without hiring a programmer to code a custom report selection/generation interface.</p>
  
  <p>But what I can't do is automate - from with the standard interface - the export of a report to PDF <em>after</em> the user selects the parameters and clicks 'View Report.'  But some posts I have come across today lead me to believe that we might be able to hack the standard SSRS interface by editing the 'ReportViewer.apsx' file on the SSRS server.</p>
  
  <p><a href="http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/sqlreportingservices/thread/a3a9d6d2-3fb8-4606-a41b-b7ced894f4a6" rel="nofollow">Click here</a> for an example of hacking this file to add extra functionality to the 'View Report' button.</p>
  
  <p>So, all you javascript gurus out there, can you figure out a way to hack SSRS's built in 'View Report' button so that the parameters are submitted and a PDF format report is returned automatically? (If jQuery would help, we can add a reference for it).</p>