Running Report Manager on newly installed Reporting Services

Sometime Microsoft seems intent on pissing off as many people as possible Their attitude towards this particular problem is exceptionally arrogant and dismissive even for them.

I just installed SQL Server 2014 Reporting Services on my personal development computer and, after configuring it, I went to Report Manager by launching IE and going to http://localhost/Reports. The browser prompted me to authenticate, which I did, and got an error message saying I don't have the required access rights.

This is what I had to do to grant myself (an administrator) rights to use Report Manager in sixteen easy steps.

1. Enable the built-in administrator account
    Run CMD as administrator and enter "NET USER administrator /active:yes"

2. Pray you remember the administrator password

3. Switch user to the administrator

4. Start IE as administrator and go to "localhost/Reports"

5. Click on Site Settings in the top right corner

6. Click on Security in the left column

7. Click [New Role Assignment]

8. Type my domain\user name and check all the checkboxes

9 . Click [OK]

10. Click on Home in the top right corner

11. Click [Folder Settings]

12. Click [New Role Assignment]

13. Type my domain\user name and check all the checkboxes

14. Click [OK]

15. Close the browser and switch back to my user

16. Prevent IE from re-authenticating when you go to Report Manager
     Tools -> Internet Options -> Security -> Local Intranet -> Sites -> Advanced
     Add http://localhost to the list of Intranet sites

Now Microsoft's attitude is that they granted access to the administrator account and that's good enough. It isn't. How hard would it have been to grant site and root folder access rights to the account that installed Reporting Services? This would have solved all these issues and would not have caused a security issue because the installing account can administer reporting services anyway - just not report manager.

Sometimes I find myself becoming confrontational with my users when I think they're being lazy or unreasonable. When I feel this coming on - I really must say to myself "Don't be Microsoft!"