Printing in the Background 

Use

You can not only evaluate queries online, but also print them in the background. In the Reporting Agent of the Administrator Workbench, you can define the display of the query data as the setting for background printing. You can make as many various settings as you want for printing a query in the background. The settings are then brought together in scheduling packets and scheduled for background printing.

Prerequisites

You have defined a query in the Business Explorer Analyzer that you now want to print in the background. You have called up the Administrator Workbench to do this.

You can only print out queries with key figures in structures. If you have defined a query with a key figure in the filter and want to print this query, you must change the definition of the query so that the key figure is in a structure to be printed.

You can only schedule queries with entered variables for background printing if the required variable entry/entries have been saved as query variants.

Procedure

Defining Reporting Agent Settings for Printing in the Background

  1. Choose the Reporting Agent from the Administrator Workbench.
  2. Navigate in the left-hand tree to the query you want, and, using the right mouse button, choose New Setting. You get to the "New Reporting Agent Setting" dialog box.
  3. Enter a technical name and a description.
  4. Choose Print in the background from the General tabstrip.
  5. Choose the tabstrip Print Settings from the newly added tabstrips.
  6. Determine the print settings that you want to make. See also: Print Settings
  7. Choose the Print Layout tabstrip.
  8. Decide how you want to set the following print areas:

See also:

Defining the Print Layout
  1. Choose Activate.

Creating Scheduling Packets and Assigning Reporting Agent Settings for Printing in the Background

Once you have made the Reporting Agent setting for printing in the background, you have to assign your setting to a scheduling packet for the background run.

Creating a scheduling packet

  1. Go back to the Reporting Agent Scheduler, and, in the right-hand Scheduling packets tree, choose the Change pushbutton.
  2. Select the Print in the background node, and choose Create new packet from the context menu (right mouse button). You get to the Create Scheduling Packet dialog box.
  3. Specify a name and a description, and choose Save.

Assigning Reporting Agent Settings for Printing in the Background

  1. Navigate in the left-hand tree, Reporting Agent Settings, to the Reporting Agent setting you want to use for printing in the background.
  2. Using drag-and-drop, drag the Reporting Agent setting that you want to use into the right-hand tree, and assign it to the corresponding scheduling packet.

If the Reporting Agent setting refers to a query with variables, then you need to assign a variant:

You have the option of maintaining variants in the Reporting Agent (in both the left and right-hand trees).

Note that you always assign Reporting Agent settings for printing in the background to a corresponding scheduling packet for printing in the background.

To avoid confusion with Reporting Agent settings for exception reporting, you are able to filter according to these two functions in the left-hand menu. The symbols for Exception and Print, in the left-hand tree, also identify the settings.

Scheduling a Packet as a Job

  1. In the right-hand tree, select the scheduling packet you want to use.
  2. Using the right mouse-button, choose Schedule from the context menu. You get to the Change Job RA (name of the scheduling packet) dialog box.

The name of the job is made up of RA for Reporting Agent, and the name of the scheduling packet.
  1. Specify the start date and the repetition period for the job.

See also:

Scheduling Background Jobs in the documentation for the BC Computing Center Management System.

If you want to check the status of the scheduled background job, choose the Jobs pushbutton above the right-hand tree in the Reporting Agent Scheduler.