Email Distribution

[darran6]

Crystal Enterprise XI

Is there a way to pick up the SI_EMAIL_ADDRESS placeholder of the user when scheduling reports?

Using the new "Schedule For" option within the CMC, it is possible to run a report as various different users/groups from the one scheduled instance.

We are exporting to PDF and delivering over email. I want to pick up the SI_EMAIL_ADDRESS of each user so they each receive their own version of the report. Unfortunately this doesn't seem to be picked up.

I tried using %SI_OWNER% in the To: field and this DOES work - it correctly picks up the user it is scheduled as and uses this as the email address. This is fine for our internal users as the mail server will deliver to the correct person based on username. However we also have agents throughout Europe for whom this won't work.

Obviously we could reconfigure the mail server, but I was hoping for a more elegant solution within CE - I'm new to CE so apologies if I'm overlooking something obvious.

Any thoughts?

Cheers,
Darran

 

[darran6]

Has anyone any ideas on this?

 

[jraheja]

I have used scheduling from within the CMS and scheduled to various email addresses from one instance and it works great. I havent picked the email address from somewhere...

 

[mdwyer]

I think you could do this through csp. I am using CE9 and have customized schedule.csp to pick up some values from the APS database and pre-populate fields on the schedule page. Some are visible to the user, so they can be changed, and some are transparent to the user. I would imagine the functionality is close enough yet in XI.

 

[jraheja]

Sorry it was Crystal management console.

 

[darran6]

I'm not sure how the processing of scheduled reports works, but I guess I'd have to look into how the reportjobserver picks up the %SI_OWNER% flag at report run-time.

The trouble is this isn't a problem with being able to specify the email address whilst scheduling the report - it is the background processing that is not picking up the %SI_EMAIL_ADDRESS% as a placeholder.

Is the background processing performed with csp/jsp etc or is it more hardwired into the system?

 

[jraheja]

Have you tried picking any other field and display the value or using the query builder to display the above field first? Just suggesting a different approach to be sure...

 

[darran6]

I've tried running the following query:

SELECT SI_ID, SI_NAME, SI_PROGID, SI_EMAIL_ADDRESS FROM CI_SYSTEMOBJS WHERE SI_PROGID='CrystalEnterprise.USER'

and this does return a list of users including email addresses.

How could I get the reporting engine to pick this up at runtime though?

 

[jraheja]

I will try to find out more information and let you know since I have used the query buider as above independantly...

 

[jraheja]

Can you not use the Schedule directly instead of picking up the email addresses?? I set up teh mail server and export the scheduled insyances as pdf files to the email addresses listed in the 'Send to'... The report job server picks up the emails provided and succesfully schedules them...I mean you dont need to program unless necessary. Am I missing something?

 

[darran6]

Unfortunately I can't simply enter all the email addresses. The report is based on a Business View which has a filter for each country in Europe where we have an agent.

Using the new "Schedule For" in XI, I run this for each country - this way I only need to schedule one instance of the report rather than one for each country.

Obviously each country should only see their own sales figures, etc. If I put %SI_OWNER% in the To: field then it does pick up each user that the report is being run for - and tries to send the correct instance to the appropriate user. I just want it to pick up the email address so I don't have to do lots of re-configuration of the mail server.

 

[jraheja]

I understand. I will try to find information. If I cannot, I will let you know ASAP...

 

[KingfisherINC]

The way I see it, you have 3 options (none great):

1. Handle it on the email server.
2. Have those users login using their email address as their userid.
3. Custom code via SDK - Which, IMO, is harder to hack into Infoview now compared to old .csp versions.

Kingfisher [CECP]