Broadcast Agent

[GRHE]

Hi

We have just taken our 1st steps into Business Objects and created a suite of reports as PDF files.

These reports we now want to run overnight and publish the results as PDF files onto our intranet.

We understand that Broadcast Agent is the way to go - but is it worth the licence fee - (which is considerable) and does each user who wishes to view the PDF output via our intranet, need a seperate BO licence ?? ??

Cheers

 

[skrandel]

You really need to talk to your sales rep. In the old world (before the Crystal merger), you could buy the BCA or a BCA starter version (for less than 50 users in your population). Users did not have any fee or license for viewing the PDF as they are outside the BO environment.

In the new world...... There is a price for all people who receive data as a result of a BO process.

Could you write a bunch of VBA code (there is a price for the SDK) that mimics the basic BCA functionality you want? Sure.

Steve Krandel
Westbay Solutions

http://www.westbaysolutions.com

 

[GRHE]

Steve

Thanks for your quick reply.

I guess the VB solution is our only way round, or we print all the reports and post them to the users!!!

I also thought you were local to me "West Bay" but you are a few more miles away

http://www.bridportandwestbay.co.uk/

Cheers
GRHE

 

[DrSmyth]

Hi,

I'm just really reiterating what Steve has said;

We are in a very similar situation and my company were just too stingy to fork out for the Broadcast Agent. However, we have reportsa running all night, saving to various folders and even e-mailing themselves to people.

It's a pain, but Steve is right, if you have the SDK then you can replicate pretty much everything you need to do from the broadcast agent.

If all you're after doing is running reports at certain times and them distributing them over a LAN in a PDF format then is is actually quite simple (with the SDK and utilising scheduled tasks on your PC) and you will be able to get the necesary coding you require from this forum if you're not too sure how you should go about it.

Andy

 

[Sridharan]

To add my views if you own SDK then replicating the BCA task is not a big thing provided you are comfortable with SDK... Again it may not be as robust as BCA is but then it works... I've created a similar app longtime back using SDK with 90% features of what BCA does...

Sri

 

[DJM99]

There are 3rd party tools that could help you out here. You should look a tool called InfoBurst from infosol for example.

http://www.infosol.com/buildpage.aspx?k=BusinessObjectsTools

Darren Marsden

http://www.bimentors.com

 

[sartre144]

GRHE,

Hi,

We have found that BCA has some limitations and developed our own version of BCA with greater functionality. It can be done.We have had this for several years and it is stable and mature at this point.
If you want any further info I can forward it to you offline

Regards,

Andrew Sonner
asonner@alteksolutions.com

 

[DrSmyth]

Andrew,

Hi, I'm very curious to take a look at your 'mature' version of BCA, hoping i might get a few more ideas from you.... Would you mind sending me a copy smyth_hustle@hotmail.com...

Cheers

Andy

 

[GRHE]

Andrew,

Any chance of forwarding your example to me John.Grindle@dorset.pnn.police.uk

Cheers
John
(alias grhe)