KB14918: In MicroStrategy Intelligence Server Universal 9.4.1 and above and newer, a red 'x' is displayed instead of an image when exporting Report Services documents to PDF.

SYMPTOM:
In Strategy Intelligence Server Universal 9.4.1 and above, a red 'x' may appear instead of an image when exporting Report Services Documents to PDF in Strategy Web. Users may notice that exporting from Strategy Developer displays images properly for these cases.
 
CAUSE:
This issue occurs because the path specified for the image is incorrect when considered relative to the Intelligence Server Universal location.
For correct display of images, the images must be available to both the Strategy Intelligence Server and to the client - Strategy Desktop - when designing the document. If the designers do not have access to the image, they will be unable to see the image while creating the document. In the Intelligence Server cannot access the image when exporting, no image will be present in the exported Document.
 
ACTION:
To ensure that the image is available to both products as needed, use any of the following in the Image Source property:

• An http reference to a central Web server machine, such as http://webserver/image_location/myimage.jpg. Strategy Intelligence Server and Desktop must both be able to access the machine. This is the recommended method, and works across all Strategy platforms and clients.
• A full path to the image on a shared network drive, such as \\my_computer\shared\myimage.jpg. All components, Strategy Intelligence Server, Strategy Desktop, and the Web server must be able to access this shared location.
• A partial path, such as Image\myimage.jpg. The image must be copied in all of the following relative folders for all the Strategy components:
  
• Desktop\Images
• Web\Images
• Intelligence Server\Images

For example, if the image is on a Web server machine, users can specify the URL for the file as long as Strategy Intelligence Server and users who design the documents can access that location. Once the location is established and the image file is available in that location, users can insert the image into a document.
NOTE: Users should be able to find the path and file name of images to use by viewing the source of a Web page.
The following types of images should be used in order to display an image correctly via PDF view:

• bmp
• jpg
• jpeg
• gif

Follow the steps below in order to insert an image in a document:

1. From the Design view in the Document Editor, click Image on the toolbar.
2. On the layout area, click and drag in the position in which to insert the image. The Image Source dialog box opens from which users can navigate and select the image to insert in the document.
3. Select a file and click the image and go to a Web page, then define it as a hyperlink.
    
   NOTE: If users are using the Strategy Intelligence Server Universal, then make sure that when the hyperlink is defined to use a UNIX forward slash, such as:
   

   
   Images/myimage.jpg

   
    
   If Strategy Web is on Windows, then the path will be correctly converted into a backslash and the image will be referenced correctly. However, if the user defines the hyperlink with a backslash, UNIX will not convert the slash and the image will not be shown.
   

 
To correctly allow the Intelligence Server Universal obtain the image, the images folder on the web server should have the correct permissions to enable access to the image from the Intelligence Server.