Excluding holidays when scheduling

[SJSFoxPro]

I'm very new to Actuate reporting. Can anyone tell me if there is a calendar functionality available to mark the holidays of the year? Also, can specific calendars be set up to use when scheduling? (For anyone who may also be a Crystal Enterprise user, I'm looking for functionality in Actuate similar to the business calendars and events in CE 10.)

For example, I need a report to run on the second business day following a bi-weekly Friday pay day. It would seem logical to schedule the report to run every 2 weeks on Tuesday following pay day, however, during some holiday periods, pay day (or the associated processing) is adjusted. The report schedule will need to be adjusted accordingly.

 

[milton747]

Log in to Actuate using Man Console.
Select the ROX you wish to run, float the mouse over the blue arrow and select New Background job.

You'll see a radio button called Advanced. Check this and Edit Schedul lights up. Press the button and a calendar allowing you to exclude holidays will appear.

 

[SJSFoxPro]

Thanks milton747!

I am aware of what you point out, but let me detail my question a bit.

I need to schedule several jobs to run on the schedule mentioned. I was hoping you could point me to a single calendar where I could mark all the holidays of the year. Then, be able to select that calendar when scheduling any jobs. I hope to avoid having to painfully complete the holidays for the entire year for 10 jobs that will run on the same schedule (i.e., complete it once and reuse. What I am referring to is functionality that exists in my Crystal Enterprise 10 system - called Business Calendars).

 

[milton747]

Absent a formal Actuate solution to calendars, alternates are:

1) Use an external scheduling service. (eg:AutoSys) that submits the request to Actuate to run reports according to a schedule.

2) Write an Actuate report that uses the Actuate Requester API to submit reports to be run. (Essentially this is one Actuate report firing off another Actuate report.) The "Submitter" report can then use whatever calendar you want. The Submitter report can read the calendar file (eg: a text file) then programmatically send requests to iServer to run the reports according to the calendar.
Use the Actuate schedular to kickoff the Submitter report everynight at 1am say. It will in turn fire off other reports to be run in background according to the calendar.


3) Write a client app that submits job requests via the
web services interface to the iServer. (Known as IDAPI).
Java based, can be complex to do. Soln 2) above much simpler albeit
and older technology.

Milt.



Here's a snippet from the Requester API manaul



About the Requester API
The Requester API controls how and when a report generates. Using this API, you can modify report parameters, then generate, display, and print reports. An application built using the Requester API can run on either Windows or
UNIX platforms.

Using the Requester API, you can write an application that performs the
following tasks:
¦ Accessing attributes and values of a report parameter
¦ Changing the values of a report parameter
¦ Generating a report <<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<
¦ Displaying and printing a report
¦ Configuring the print setup

To display and print a report, the Requester API works with viewer.exe and runview.exe which install with Actuate e.Report Designer and e.Report
Designer Professional. This API requires Actuate e.Report Designer, e.Report
Designer Professional, or End User Desktop to generate and display a report
locally.
To work with parameter attributes and values, you can use the Requester API
functions to get information about each parameter’s attributes, the names of
parameters and parameter groups, the default values of required parameters,
and current parameter values.
The Requester API also provides functions you can use to change the default
printer and the printer settings before printing a report.
Actuate Basic Client Integration Technology includes examples for the
Requester API in \Program Files\Actuate8\ClntIntTech\Requester API\
Examples.