Creating Event-Based Schedules

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.

Alert reporting automates the evaluation of a defined condition to determine whether or not a report should be submitted. Recipients of the report know before they open it that they are receiving this report because there is an exception in their area of responsibility. This topic introduces and describes how you can create Alerts in WebFOCUS.

Alert Reporting

A data-driven Alert is an event that is prompted by a guideline that you define. This guideline can vary from the simple to the complex. For example, a simple guideline is to alert a sales manager when an order that exceeds $1 million is entered. An example of a more complex guideline is to alert a department manager when cumulative expenses exceed budget for any category. The report sent to the manager as a result of the Alert might show the most recent transactions, the amounts, and the sources.

Alert reporting is an integrated feature of WebFOCUS Managed Reporting and ReportCaster. An Alert report can be run interactively or by authorized users. You can use ReportCaster to schedule and distribute an Alert report. Burst capability can send targeted information to the people who need it, so that there is less information for each person to analyze.

Alerts work with all email clients. They are supported on the following mobile devices: iPhone®, iPad®, and email enabled mobile phones. Alerts can also be sent to any PC or laptop computer with email capability.

Alerts provide the following:

• Alert tools. Using Alert Assist, you can quickly set up test conditions (rules) that determine if an Alert condition should be triggered (true). This is called the Alert test. When the Alert test is triggered (true), the Alert result is run. An Alert result can be an existing report procedure or you can create the Alert result using InfoAssist.
• Scheduling flexibility. Optionally, you can schedule an Alert to run as often as every minute to evaluate the Alert test conditions.