Sep 2, 2017
Different Sources for Bursting Reports
This article details the different bursting methodology you can use to send and to generate different PDFs and/or Emails.
Overview
To enable Report bursting on your reports, select the following option on your Report action:
An option to burst these reports is provided via the 3rd tab:
From which the following options is shown when you click the plus icon on the right side:
Most types of bursting methodology allows you to define a placeholder or variable, which you can then use on your Emails or the URLs of your attachments which will then generate the PDFs.
For example, if we have defined a dimension subset as follows:
This means that the elements of the subset ‘Burst’ in dimension ‘Region’ will be available for each ‘burst’. If for example the Burst subset has the following elements:
When the task runs, it will generate Emails and PDFs depending on how many iterations is available on your burst tab. On this case, since there are only two elements on the Burst subset, it will run two times. These elements are available and can be accessed by typing the following:
{{region}}
For example, in the subject of your email you can type like:
The effect of this will then be, for each burst, the placeholder {{region}} will then be replaced with the iteration value – first is with ‘Finland’, second is with ‘England’.
You can do this on the various parts of the email and also in the URLs if you have an attachment.
Here are the other source you can use for your report bursting:
Dimension Subset
Selecting this burst type means being able to utilize the elements in a subset, into your emails or reports.
Dimension MDX
This option provides you the option to retrieve the elements by executing an MDX against a dimension.
Cube View
As you have noticed, there is no input for placeholder. What it actually uses as placeholders are the names of the dimensions on the row of your Cube View! And this is how the cube view looks like:
With this, you can manage the bursting even via Cube View.
CSV
Using comma separated values as a starting point can also be used. This method allows you to use adhoc data. You can start by uploading a CSV into the provided box or create your own table of information:
Similar to Cube View, the placeholder name will be the header of the CSV, or the first row.
CSV Path
Instead of starting with a CSV file, you can provide a CSV path accessible in the server which will then get parsed when the task runs. This allows you to update the file prior to running the actual task, or have a TI for example, to re-generate the file prior to running this Report action. Note that you can also schedule a TI to run as part of this task (the others being Chores, and Wait times).
This is the options you will be provided with:
The files in here should then be accessible within the current Canvas’ applications file directory as defined in the Settings. These are further separated by the instance name. So in the case above, the location will be at:
<Canvas Application>files<instance>
Or as an example for our samples application that is for example installed in drive C,
C:CWASwebappssamplesfilesdevcontent.csv
And that is it!
Lastly, also note that you can mix and merge different bursting sources!