Schedule a Report or Document to be Sent to a Network Folder

You can have a report or document automatically delivered to a folder on your network on a specific schedule. To do so, you must subscribe to the report or document, as described in the steps below.

You can customize your subscription by typing macros in the File Name, Sub-folder, or Zip File Name fields. These macros are automatically replaced with the appropriate text when the report or document is delivered. For example, you create a subscription to a document. If you type {&Project} in the File Name field, the name of the project in which the document is saved is displayed in the name of the document when it is delivered.

For a list of the macros available, see the Scheduling Jobs and Administrative Tasks chapter in the System Administration Help.

To send a report or document to a network folder on a schedule

1. Do one of the following:

   • For a report, click the name of the report to run it.

   • For a document, edit the document in Design Mode or Editable Mode.

     • To edit a document in Design Mode, from a folder, right-click the document and select Edit. If the document is open in Presentation Mode, click the menu icon on the right, and select Edit.
     • To edit a document in Editable Mode, from a folder, right-click the document, point to Run as, and select Editable.
2. From the Home menu, point to Subscribe to, and select File. The Schedule Delivery to File dialog box opens.
3. From the Schedule drop-down, select a schedule or event on which to deliver the report or document. You can create new schedules in the MicroStrategy Developer Schedule Manager. For steps, see the Scheduling Jobs and Administrative Tasks chapter in the System Administration Help.

4. Determine the delivery location (recipient) for the report or document by doing one of the following:

• If the folder that you want to deliver the report or document to is available in the drop-down next to Location, select the folder.

• To add delivery locations to the drop-down, click Location. The Recipients Browser Dialog Box opens. Perform the following steps:

  1. To select delivery locations, use the Add to Selections arrow to move one or more locations from the Available list on the left to the To list on the right.
  2. To add delivery locations to the drop-down, type a name for the new delivery location in the Address Name field. In the Physical Address field, specify a folder path to a new or existing folder for the delivery location. For example, a properly specified path is: \\FileServ2\SalesReports\Jan03\. Select a location type from the Device drop-down. When you are finished defining the new delivery location, click Add to Recipients

  Any locations you create must be accessible from the machine on which Distribution Services is installed.

  3. Click OK when you are finished adding delivery locations.
• To create a new folder in which to deliver files, from the drop-down, select User-selected location, then type the location in which the new folder should be created on your network, with the new folder name, in the Sub-folder field.
5. From the Delivery Format drop-down, select the format in which to send the report or document. When Excel or PDF is chosen, the report is included as an attachment in the email.
6. You can reduce the size of the report or document by including it in a zip file. Select the Compress contents checkbox. This option is only available if the Delivery Format option is set to a file format other than HTML.

7. If the report or document contains grouped objects, do one of the following:

   • To print the data for all objects, select the Expand page-by fields checkbox.
   • To print the data only for the objects currently selected in the Page-by panel (for reports) or the Grouping panel (for documents), clear the Expand page-by fields checkbox.

8. You can specify the delimiter character to use to separate values in a report, such as a comma or tab. This option is only available for reports sent as plain text. From the Delimiter drop-down, select one of the following:

   • To choose a delimiter from the list, select the delimiter you want to use, such as Comma or Space.
   • To specify your own delimiter, select Other, then type the character you want to use as the delimiter in the field.
9. Type a name for the file in the File Name field.

10. To replace all spaces in the file name with another character, in the Delimiter field, type the character to replace all spaces with. To see a list of characters that cannot be used as space delimiters, hover the cursor over the information icon .

    Spaces that are created by expanding macros, such as a space between the time and date in a timestamp, are not replaced by the space delimiter.

11. You can split, or burst, a report or document into multiple files and subfolders. Each file contains a portion of data based on the attributes used to group the report or document. Documents that contain multiple layouts can be split, if each layout contains the attributes selected for bursting. To burst the report or document, complete the following steps:

    1. Click Burst. The Bursting Criteria Editor is displayed, with all the attributes used to group the report or document displayed in the Available Attributes list.

    If a "No bursting elements available" message is displayed, you must place at least one attribute on the Page-by panel (for reports) or Grouping panel (for documents).

    2. In the Available Attributes list, select the attributes to use to split the data, and click > to move them to the Selected Attributes list. When the subscription is executed, a separate file is created for each element of each selected attribute.
    3. To ensure that each file is given a unique name when the subscription is executed, you can type a macro in the File Name field. For example, if you select the Region and Category attributes to burst the document, you can type the macro {[Region]@[DESC]},{[Category]@[DESC]}. When the subscription is executed, each file is given a file name beginning with the names of the attribute elements used to generate the file, such as Central, Books or Central, Electronics.

    4. To create subfolders based on the attributes in the report's page-by axis, in the Sub-folder field under the File Name field, type a macro using the syntax {[Attribute Name]@[Attribute Form]}. For example, to create a subfolder for each manager in the report and Manager is in the page-by in the report, you can type {[Manager]@[Last Name]}. If the subfolders do not exist, they are created, and the subscribed reports are placed in the subfolders.

       If the report contains multiple attributes in the page-by axis, you can create multiple levels of subfolders. For example, if the report has Manager and Category in the page-by, you can type {[Manager]@[Last Name]\[Category]@[DESC]} in the Sub-folder field to create category subfolders in the manager subfolders.

12. For a report or document with prompts, all prompts are displayed if you are not subscribing to a report or document that is open. The selections you make for these prompts will be used whenever the report or document is delivered.
13. Expand the Advanced Options.
14. For reports or documents included in a zip file, you can password protect the zip file for additional security. Select the Password protect zip file checkbox and type a password for the zip file. This option is available only when the Compress Contents checkbox is selected.
15. If you chose to include the report or document in a zip file, you can specify a name for the zip file. Type the name in the Zip File Name field. This option is available only when the Compress Contents checkbox is selected.
16. To specify a date after which to stop delivering the report or document, select the Do not deliver after checkbox, then select the date from the calendar.
17. By default, if you have selected a contact group as the recipient of the report or document, MicroStrategy uses the security filter of the contact group as a whole when delivering the report or document. To use the separate security filters for each member of the subscribed contact group instead, select the Use contact security for each group member checkbox.

18. To have a notification email sent when the report or document is delivered, select the Send notification to email address checkbox, then do one of the following:

    • To send the notification to an email address that has already been defined, select an address from the To drop-down.
    • To send the notification to a new email address, in the New Address field, type the email address you want to send a delivery notification to and select the email client type of the specified email address from the drop-down.
19. Click OK. The file will be delivered to the specified location on the specified schedule.

To verify that you are subscribed to the report or document, click the MicroStrategy icon at the top of the page and select My Subscriptions. The report appears in the File Subscriptions list.

Related Topics

Subscribe to Reports and Documents