I was doing some testing of the new Addin to Microsoft Office (AMO) 4.3/M3 a week or two ago and specifically the addin for Outlook.

When trying to open a SAS Report (.srx) in Outlook we got this error.

Looks like the SAS AMO 4.3 plugin relies on the Web Report Studio web services that automatically  get installed when you install the Web tier.

The issue of course is this customer is only using AMO and has not deployed any of the web tier, but in good optimal practice are using Information Maps and .srx reports (created via Enterprise Guide).

So looks like using Outlook to access these .srx is out.

Now I know Kiwi’s (New Zealanders) are known for their number 8 wire approaches and also being frugal (a large number are of course descended from the Scots , so a number of NZ customers have purchased BI Server and only implemented the SAS Server, Enterprise Guide and AMO, as that meets their current needs.  In these cases it looks like using the Outlook version is out of the question.

And with SAS announcing an AMO/EG only offering again use of .srx reports is out im guessing.

Anyway one positive is after playing briefly with the Outlook capability on my test server, I can actually see the Outlook capability taking over from the Portal eventually.  Why would users want to login to the Portal to get their reports when they can access them directly from within Outlook where they spend so much of their time?