Introduction
While it is the general practice to have a specific output format for a report, sometimes some common report like Employee Basic Details Report needs to be send to multiple downstream application and there may be a scenario when each one of the downstream application has it specific needs like data fields, frequency of file transfer and most important of all output file type.
While for a traditional ERP System one had to design specific programs one each for the downstream application explicitly the same probably could be achieved easily in Fusion Cloud System.
It allows not just 1, 2 or 5 different file formats but as many as 15 different versions.
Impressive, isn’t it, but that’s more of theory and would be nice to verify via a worked example.
So let-us dig in deep and find out.
Worked Out Example
While we could have created a completely new custom report altogether from scratch but let-us use as existing Report (details of creating the same may be found here) in the interest of time.
We would assume that a report already exists and we would take the same as a starting point.
As a first step let-us login to the application and locate the specific report we are referring to (the one which would be used for this example)
A quick click on the ‘Open’ links shows us the report data (in the default output format set in Report’s properties. I guess its CSV for this one)
Next, we need to click on the Actions (wheel icon highlighted in yellow in the screen-shot below) and select the ‘Edit Report’ option
This will open up a new screen where we need to choose the ‘View a List’ link
Once on this screen we need to fill the following details:
Attribute Name |
Attribute Value |
Name |
SampleEmpDataReport |
Template File |
SampleEmpDataReport.xpt |
Type |
xpt |
Output Formats |
Interactive;HTML;PDF;RTF;Excel (mhtml);Excel (html);Excel (*.xlsx);PowerPoint (mhtml);PowerPoint (*.pptx);MHTML;PDF/A;PDF/X;Zipped PDFs;FO Formatted XML;Data (XML);Data (CSV) |
Default Format |
Data (CSV) |
Default Layout |
Checked |
Apply Style Template |
Unchecked |
Active |
Checked |
View Online |
Checked |
Locale |
English (United States) |
And the filled in UI would appear as below:
Next we should save this setting and proceed to running the Report using Schedule option.
Next we need to move to the ‘Output’ tab and select all available formats:
Once selected we should click on ‘Submit’ button and give a Report Job Name
Once we click on OK it would show a confirmation message.
And when we move to the Report History we will see the following:
And finally a quick click on the ‘Report Job Name’ will show all available outputs as expected:
And we could see that there are 15 different output formats in which the output has been generated.
So we ran one BI Report and got 15 different output formats which if required may be send explicitly to individual users/systems as per business requirement.
I guess it is a very cool feature and might be very useful in sharing data to downstream application and would make the maintenance task simpler as we need to monitor just one BI Report instead of multiple and also in case any changes are required we can make the same at one single place and expect the same to be reflected in all different output types.
And with this I have reached the end of this article. Hopefully this is a good read and was able to give you an insight into BI capabilities and various features available within a Cloud Environment (these features are also available in an On-Premise Environment too)
That’s It for the day have a nice day and a Very Happy and Prosperous New Year!!
Comments
massive amount work? I've virtually no knowledge of computer programming
however I had been hoping to start my own blog soon. Anyway, should you have any ideas or tips for new blog owners please share.
I know this is off subject however I just had to ask.
Cheers!
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