Appendix B. How to Do This and That

Sometimes it might be required to distribute existing reports which are pre-generated and already contain (only) the relevant data for the intended recipient. Such reports don't require any further splitting but only to be distributed, without any modification, to the proper destination. This destination might be email or any other destination type which is currently supported by DocumentBurster (e.g. FTP, SFTP, etc.).

DocumentBurster can be configured to distribute external/existing documents which do not require splitting.

There are two different ways to configure the recipients list and the path to the document(s) to be distributed to each separate recipient.

When using Excel for configuration

Check the existing sample report samples/Distribute-External-Files.xls which can be found in samples folder. Distribute-External-Files.xls report contains a list of recipients together with the relevant report to be distributed to each one of them.

The document paths are dynamically mapped using the $var0$ user variable. In this sample

Using DocumentBurster it is possible to implement conditional report delivery . While bursting the reports, DocumentBurster can check and can distribute only those reports which fail to meet a specified user defined condition and can be configured to skip the delivery for the reports which meet the condition.

Use case example

DocumentBurster can be deployed and can be easily configured to act as a management by exception reporting system which will alert the management team only for the cases where the minimum performance levels are not met.

For example, the management of your organization might require for getting each morning only the reports for the sales with very low profit margins or for the transactions with deviations from the approved discounts.

Configuration

By default, if configured to distribute reports, DocumentBurster will deliver to the relevant recipients all reports which are being generated during the bursting process. The default behavior can be changed, and DocumentBurster can be configured to skip the report distribution, by placing a text which has the pattern similar with <skip>true</skip> in each of the output documents which should be skipped for report distribution.

If configured to distribute reports, DocumentBurster will distribute to the relevant recipients all the reports which are being generated during the bursting process and for which DocumentBurster :

This sample script can be used to achieve complex conditional report delivery scenarios.

DocumentBurster 's built-in capabilities (skip instruction) can be used to achieve many conditional distribution scenarios while this sample script (scripts/burst/samples/skip_current_file_distribution_if.groovy) should be used for achieving the remaining and more complex situations which cannot be easily implemented using the built-in skip instruction approach.

This sample script can be used to achieve conditional report distribution in situations similar with the following

  • The condition to skip the distribution cannot be achieved using a skip report formula (e.g. skip the delivery for files which are bigger than 20MB)
  • The condition to skip the distribution is too complex and it might be more convenient to describe this condition in scripting than with a skip report formula
  • The input report cannot be modified (for whatever reason) to accommodate any skip instruction

skip_current_file_distribution_if.groovy approach is described in detail in skip_current_file_distribution_if.groovy from DocumentBurster™ - Advanced Report Delivery Scenarios.