SSRS - Use URL to Render to Excel

So many times have I had to render a SSRS report to excel from an application? The easiest way to do this I have found is to use the URL of the report to set the output format.

This can be done by appending "&rs:Format=Excel" to the end of the reports URL string. For example:

http://servername/ReportServer?foldername/reportname&rs:Format=Excel

If however I needed to pass a parameter to the report from a calling application I can simply add the parameter as a url parameter as well. The following example shows who to pass a parameter called "eventID" to the SSRS report and render the output to Excel format:

http://servername/ReportServer?foldername/reportname&rs:Format=Excell&EventId=23