Distributing Reports Using Publications

Publishing

Publishing is the process of making documents available for consumption. The contents of these documents can be distributed automatically through scheduling to various destinations.

Publication

A publication is a collection of documents meant for distribution to a mass audience. Before the documents are distributed, the publisher defines the publication using a collection of publishing data. The publishing data includes the publication source, its recipients, and optionally a profile for personalization.

Publications

Publications can help you send information through your organization more efficiently.

Benefits of Publications

• Enable you to distribute information to individuals or groups of users and filter the information for each principal.

• Delivery of targeted business information to groups or individuals through a password-protected portal.

• Minimize database access by eliminating the need for users to send individual process requests.

Note

Publications can be based on one or more Crystal Reports or Web Intelligence documents.  You can not mix and match report types.

Usually, the publisher (the user who owns and schedules the publication) can view all publication instances for all recipients; the recipients can view their own filtered publication instances only.

Note

If you’re a publisher and want to add yourself to a publication as a recipient, use two user accounts for yourself: a Publisher account and a Recipient account. The Publisher account grants you the rights you need when you design and schedule publications, while the Recipient account grants you the rights of a typical recipient.

Formats define the file types that a publication's output will be published in. A single document can be published in several formats and can be delivered to different destinations. For several document publications, you can specify a different format for each. For publications that include Web Intelligence documents, you can publish the whole document or a single report within the document to different formats.

Any format you choose for a document apply to all recipients of the publication. If you want the recipients to receive instances in both a Microsoft Excel file and a PDF format, each recipient will receive both formats.

The following link gives descriptions of each format type:

Publishing Formats

Destinations are locations that you deliver publications to. A destination can be the Default Enterprise Location, the BI Inbox, an e-mail address, an FTP server, or a directory on a file system. You can specify several destinations for a publication.

You can publish several Crystal Reports and merge them into a single PDF.

If you want to publish a publication as a single ZIP file, choose to zip the instances on a per destination basis. For example, zip the instances for e-mail recipients and leave them individually for BI Inboxes.

During publishing, the data in documents is refreshed against data sources and a personal filter is applied before the publication is delivered to recipients. This combined process is known as "report bursting." There are several report bursting methods you can choose from:

• One database fetch for all recipients

  When you use this report bursting method, all documents in the publication are refreshed once, and then a filter is applied and delivered to each recipient. This report bursting method uses the data source logon credentials of the publisher to refresh data.

  This bursting method is used for Web Intelligence document publications. It's also the recommended option when you want to minimize the impact of Publishing on your database. This option protects data only when the documents are delivered as static documents. For example, a recipient who gets a Web Intelligence document in its original format can change the document and view the data related with other recipients. However, if the document is delivered as a PDF, the data would be protected.

  Note

  • This option protects data for most Crystal Reports.

  • The performance of this option varies depending on the number of recipients.

• One database fetch for each batch of recipients

  When you use this report bursting method, the publication is refreshed, profiles are applied, and the documents are delivered to recipients in batches. This report bursting method uses the data source logon credentials of the publisher to refresh data. The batches are based on the personal filter values you specified for the recipients. The batch size varies depending on the personal filter value and isn’t configurable.

  This bursting method is the default option for a Crystal Reports publications. It’s also the recommended option for high-volume scenarios. With this option, you can process batches concurrently on different servers, which reduce the processing load and time needed for large publications.

  Note

  This option is unavailable for Web Intelligence documents.

• One database fetch per recipient

  The data in a document is refreshed for every recipient. For example, if there are five recipients for a publication, the publication is refreshed five times. This report bursting method uses the data source logon credentials of the recipient to refresh data.

  This option is recommended if you want to maximize security for delivered publications.

Personalization is the process of filtering data in source documents so that only relevant data is displayed for publication recipients. Personalization changes the view of the data, but it doesn’t always change or protect the data being queried from the data source.