Scheduling and Distributing Content

The Distribution tab in the Basic Scheduling tool provides the options available for distributing the report output for the scheduled report procedure (FEX). After selecting the option from the shortcut menu of a procedure, you can distribute a report output using one of the following methods.

• Email
• FTP
• Printer
• Report Library
• Repository

Note:

This section provides the overall procedure to create a new schedule for a report procedure (FEX). Some steps in the procedure contain details on the associated options, while other steps direct you to a separate section that contains detailed descriptions of the options and additional information, such as tips in making a selection.

A Distribution List is an easy way to distribute content to multiple recipients. You can specify the name of a list stored in the Repository that contains the individual recipients, rather than entering each recipient separately into a schedule. A Distribution List can be made available to other users by sharing it or changing its ownership to be managed or published.

In the business climate today, cutting costs and increasing profitability are critical. Organizations create and distribute reports for evaluating and taking action when management-defined conditions are not met. The evaluation can largely be automated using Alert reporting.

When an Alert test is false (and therefore not activated), the Alert result report is not run. When an Alert schedule runs, information about the Alert test evaluation (true or false) and any error or warning messages that occur during schedule or Alert processing are written to the log file.

In order to track the completion of a scheduled Alert, or errors that occurred during processing without checking the log report for the Alert schedule, we recommend that you use the Schedule Notification option.

In the Scheduling tool, the Notification tab allows you to specify:

The Alert feature requires the following components:

• TIBCO WebFOCUS® Reporting Server. This server is responsible for processing the procedure, accessing and retrieving the requested data, and creating the report when the Alert test is triggered (true).
• Managed Reporting. This environment is used to create and manage Alerts in the Repository.

An Alert consists of the following:

When you create an Alert in the web browser, it invokes Alert Assist and then InfoAssist. Alert Assist has a user interface similar to InfoAssist. The following image shows the TIBCO WebFOCUS® Alert Assist interface.

Alert Assist Main Menu

Authorized users can run an Alert test interactively and optionally schedule it to be distributed by ReportCaster.

The following image shows basic Alert processing.

The following procedures describe how to create an Alert test, and Alert result using Alert Assist, and how to schedule an Alert with ReportCaster.

Procedure: How to Create an Alert Test

1. In the Alert Assist main window, right-click the Test node, and then point to New, as shown in the following image.