(note: for the solution to this challenge, please read this article)

This one is a challenge.  We are so close yet so far.  This is a follow up to this article SQL Date Error article as we wanted to go with a clean installation.

What we are trying to do is provide a secured Internet enabled SharePoint site (Windows SharePoint 2007 or WSS 3.0) integrated to SQL Reports 2008 using an SSL Certificate.

We are using a single Windows 2003 server to host all these services.  We can get the server perfectly configured all on local network subnet.  Reports come up and everything looks good.  In this case, when things are good, here are some particulars:

Reporting URLs

http://sp01:8080/ReportServer

http://sp01:8080/Reports

SharePoint URLs

http://sp01

SharePoint integration is connecting fine when we used the http://sp01:8080/ReportServer URL.

Alternative Access Mappings
http://sp01 (default)
-no others

On the local net, this works great.   We then add an SSL certificate to IIS on Port 443.  The domain name will resolve locally to the sp01 server.  SharePoint launches fine.  But when we try to run a SQL Report, we get this error:

“An unexpected error occurred while connecting to the report server. Verify that the report server is available and configured for SharePoint integrated mode. –> The request failed with HTTP status 401: Unauthorized.”

Sometimes we will get this general error: “An unexpected error occurred while connecting to the report server. Verify that the report server is available and configured for SharePoint integrated mode.”

We have tried to add alternate access mappings with no help.  We have tried to reconfigure the SharePoint server to use the SSL and fully qualified domain name to be the “Default” alternative Access Mappings.   We have done some google work on it and this issue appears to be a challenge.  But this has got to work.  Conceptually, where is the issue?  It is so close.

If we try to add an SSL cert to the Reporting Services, like this, we can get to the reporting service URL:

https://my.domain.com:4443/ReportServer

It draws a basic page which looks okay to us.  Note, we are deliberately using 4443 so it won’t conflict with our desired SharePoint configuration of:

https://my.domain.com:443/

However, when we go to SharePoint central administration and try to update the integration settings to “https://my.domain.com:4443/ReportServer”, it won’t take it.  It returns with this error:
“Server was unable to process request. —> The request failed with HTTP status 401: Unauthorized.”

It really appears that something happens when we use SSL during authentication through the connectivity from SharePoint to Report Services.

We will keep working it…