ReportCaster


Publishing Distribution Lists

A domain must be published in order to publish items within the domain, including Distribution Lists. Published items or folders display in color, while unpublished items or folders display in black and white.

From the WebFOCUS Home Page or ReportCaster Explorer, right click the domain that contains the Distribution List that you want to publish and click Publish. To unpublish the domain, and in effect the Distribution List, click Unpublish.

Bursting a Report

Instead of distributing an entire report from a scheduled report procedure (FEX), you can use the burst feature to break the report into sections to be distributed separately to the same or different destinations. Bursting enables you to target relevant sections of a report to individual users. Each report section is saved to a separate file.

Creating an External Distribution File

When creating a schedule, you can distribute scheduled output to a single recipient, or to several recipients. If you are creating a schedule to be distributed to several recipients, you may want to create an external distribution file consisting of multiple recipients. The external distribution file can then be assigned to any schedule. An external distribution file is functionally similar to a Distribution List except it is created outside of ReportCaster.

Importing a List of Members to Create Distribution Lists

You can create new Distribution Lists by importing members from an existing Distribution List file without entering individual members manually. Before you import a list, confirm that it meets the requirements for a Distribution List, such as comma-delimited records. This ensures that the list will import successfully.

The Import option is available on the Distribution List tab, in the Actions group, as shown in the following image.

Creating a Dynamic Distribution List

A Dynamic Distribution List enables you to return in memory either a list of burst values and destinations, or only a list of destinations from a data source (for example, a flat file, SQL database, FOCUS data source, or LDAP). You must code a WebFOCUS procedure (FOCEXEC) that is available to the path of the server defined in either the server profile (edasprof.prf) or the user profile. The procedure must return the distribution information (using the PCHOLD command) with the data in a specific layout that you define.

Generating a Dynamic Distribution List From WebFOCUS Repository Procedures

You can create Dynamic Distribution List procedures using your personal text editor, or using the text editor available in the WebFOCUS user interface. When assigning the Email Distribution option to a schedule, select the Dynamic Distribution List from Repository Procedure option to choose a Dynamic Distribution List procedure stored in the Repository. While not all users may have access to the Reporting Server, where Dynamic Distribution List procedures can also be stored, most users are allowed to access the Repository.

Specifying Multiple Email Addresses

When creating a schedule or Distribution List, you can specify multiple email addresses within a single field, row, or record.

When creating a schedule or Distribution List, you can separate each email address with a comma (,) or a semicolon (;).

The multiple email addresses will appear in the To line of a single email when the scheduled output is distributed.

Note:

Scheduling Content

WebFOCUS allows you to use schedules to distribute reports to multiple recipients. A schedule allows you to specify when to run a report, the format in which to create the output, and how it will be distributed. You can create Basic and Advanced schedules, maintain saved schedules, and review schedule information before and after the distribution of your report.