SSRS error “something went wrong please try again later” in web portal

I have a brand new installation of SQL Server Reporting Services 2019 on top of MSSQL 2019 Enterprise CU1. SSRS has been installed and configured using default settings, apart from the service account it should use. Both AD and MSSQL instance are configured in minimum permissions only (or close to this state). When I am accessing the Web Portal I receive an error saying “please try again later”, which isn’t much of help. I found many similar posts asking for help on the same issue, but wanted to see the answer here.

After some digging I found plenty of unconnected issues, but finally managed to solve them and wanted to share them all in one place so nobody else waste that much time if hits the same issue (or some of them).

First you want to access is the Reporting Services Error Catalog, depending on your installation directory, it will be something like this:

?:Program FilesMicrosoft SQL Server Reporting ServicesSSRSLogFiles

As there will be multiple files I recommend you to stop the SSRS service (PS as admin):

Get-Service -Name SQLServerReportingServices | Stop-Service

Then remove all of the files there (still in the same PS session):

Remove-Item -Path ?:Program FilesMicrosoft SQL Server Reporting ServicesSSRSLogFiles -Force

This might fail for the ReportingServicesWMI_YYYY_MM_DD_HH_MM_SS.log file as it is in use, but there is no need to stop the WmiPrvSE.exe here, you can leave it as it is.

One you have your log space cleared you can start the SSRS service again:

Get-Service -Name SQLServerReportingServices | Start-Service

And access the Web Portal again. Go as deep as you need to access the error again and stop the SSRS service again. At this point you should be able to find your error message in one of the error log files.

As your can differ I will just list all of the fixes I had to apply:

• Give Full Control to the service user I used to run reporting services over the:

  ?:Program FilesMicrosoft SQL Server Reporting ServicesSSRSReportServerRSTempFiles

• Give SSRS MSSQL Login permission to View any database

  USE [master]
GO
GRANT VIEW ANY DATABASE TO [DOMAINSSRS_MSSQL_Login] AS [sa]

• Allow Log on as a batch job to SSRS service user:

  RUN --> secpol.msc
Security Settings --> Local Policies --> User Rights Assignment --> Log on as a batch job
Add User or Group

Reference Material

• Reporting Services Log Files and Sources (Microsoft | SQL Docs)

Just as an addition,
I’m a DBA and was getting the same error on one of the BI reports when I attempted to manage the report.
It turns out that SSRS does not like single quotes in the report name.
Customer ‘CN’ details.rdl
I remove the single quotes and redeployed the report.
That resolved the issue.
Cheers

I had the same issue today. Turns out it was an issue with one of the queries providing default values to a parameter. I found it by looking at the log files in C:Program FilesMicrosoft SQL Server Reporting ServicesSSRSLogFiles, specifically ReportingServicesService*.log.

Hope this helps someone!

Brian