Batching of burst report output for delivery by email.

This document explains how several burst report outputs may be batched together and delivered to a recipient as multiple attachments to a single email. It also shows how to merge data into the subject line of the email.

Preamble - Bursting is the process of running a report once and dividing the output into subsets for distribution. Each recipient receives only that part of the data that is relevant to them. For example sales managers in different regions each need a report showing the sales figures for their own territory. !ou can create a sales report and burst its output by sales territory emailing the appropriate section to each sales manager. Instead of emailing you can choose to save the burst output to a specific directory for subse"uent viewing in #ognos #onnection. But for the rest of this document we$ll assume that email delivery has been chosen. Bursting a report re"uires % &'eys$ ( a &burst$ 'ey which specifies how the report will be divided )by sales territory in this example* and a &recipients$ 'ey that specifies how the report sections will be distributed. For full information about report bursting see the +eport ,tudio -rofessional .uthoring /ser 0uide. Bursting is such a useful techni"ue that recipients may find themselves receiving numerous emails every wee' or month each containing some component of their periodic status reports. 1ormally you run multiple reports together by including them in a job. For each report in the job you select the Bursting option2

.nd to initiate email delivery you select the &,end a lin' to the report by email$ option. Editing this option allows you to specify that the report be sent as an email attachment2

1ote that you do not need to specify the recipient for a burst report3 this is determined by the report$s burst specification. 1ow as each report in the job is run its various outputs will be emailed to their respective recipients. But this may result in some users receiving multiple emails each containing a single report. ,o how can you collect the outputs of all these reports and send them together in a single email4

.n alternative to running multiple reports in a job is to include them in an Event ,tudio agent. .n agent can contain multiple report tas's each running a single report. !ou can also create an email tas' and attach the results of the various report tas's to the email. .nd you can address an email &dynamically$ by dragging a data item containing an email address to the +ecipient field ( which causes an email to be sent to each person in the list. By combining all these features you can send one email to each person containing the burst outputs of multiple reports. Method ( 5pen Event ,tudio and choose the pac'age that contains your recipient list. 6efining a #ondition ( In Event ,tudio you define a condition which is evaluated when the agent runs. If the condition evaluates to &true$ - that is there are data items that meet that condition - the agent performs its tas's using those data items. In this example we$ll assume that reports will be sent to all sales staff who have a sales target. This avoids sending &empty$ emails to staff who have no sales target2

.dding +eport Tas's ( 1ow you can create report tas's to run each of your burst reports. In the I want to pane clic' Add a task and then select Run a report ,elect the first of your reports. #lic' the et lin' and override the default run options2

,elect the Burst the reports chec'box but do not select end the report by email )this will be done by an email tas'*. #lic' !" to save the options. #reate more report tas's and set the options as above for each report you wish to run. .dding an Email Tas' - In the I want to pane clic' Add a task and then select end an email If there is an entry in the #o$ field delete it. 1ow drag the data item that represents your recipients$ email addresses from the Insertable ob%ects area to the #o$ field of the email )this is the same data item used to define the recipients 'ey in the reports$ burst options*. .dd a ub%ect$ line. The example below shows a &dynamic$ subject utili7ing data from the pac'age. #lic' the drop-down control by the Attach lin' under the email body and attach the output of each report2

,ave the agent and then run it. The agent executes its tas's. It firstly runs the reports and saves the burst report outputs. It then creates an email to each of the recipients and includes the relevant outputs from each of the burst reports. 8ere is the resulting email to one of the recipients 6onald #how. 8e receives a single email with three reports containing only data relevant to him2

1ote that the subject includes the data from the pac'age. Because no text was entered in the email body the first report is displayed &in-line$ within the email3 the remaining reports are included as attachments. If some text had been entered within the email body then all three reports would have been attached.