Schedule a Report or Document to be Sent to an FTP Server

You can have a report or document automatically delivered to a location on your FTP server 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.

This procedure assumes that an administrator has already added your FTP server as a new device in Developer. Steps to do so are included in the System Administrator Help.

To send a report or document to an FTP server 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 FTP. The Subscribe to FTP dialog box opens.
3. From the Schedule drop-down list, 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 FTP server that you want to deliver the report or document to is available in the drop-down list next to Location, select the FTP server.

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

     1. To add existing 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 list, type a name for the new delivery location in the Address Name field. In the Physical Address field, specify the folder path to a new or existing folder on the FTP server where the files will be delivered. For example, a properly specified path is: FTPdelivery/reportfolder. From the Device drop-down list, select your FTP device. 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.
5. From the Delivery Format drop-down list, select the format in which to send the report or document.
6. You can reduce the size of the report or document by including it in a zip file. Select the Compress contents checkbox.

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. Type a name for the file in the File Name field.

9. 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.

10. If prompt answers are displayed, select the prompt answers to use whenever the report or document is delivered.
11. Expand the Advanced Options.
12. 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.
13. 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.
14. 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.
15. 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.

16. 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 list.
    • 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 list.
17. 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 FTP Subscriptions list.

Related Topics

Subscribe to Reports and Documents