Report Distribution Using XML Publisher - Right Report To The Right Person

Consider the situation where you have to run certain report, which is keyed by the Business Unit and Company. Once the report is run using a job using a batch user id, the report should go to the CEO of the Company and Business Unit combination. 

The above requirement can be achieved as below through an XML Publisher report.

You might know the bursting feature in XML Publisher, which will help you to slice the report based on a field. As the first step, to extend this functionality, I added another Colum (say BU_COMP_MIX) to the report staging table which is a concatenated of the BU and Company. And burst the report on this field. Make Sense?

Now you have to create a view with the CEO details for a Company and Business Unit combination along with the BU_COMP_MIX field. I name the view as AN_CEO_DET_VW. Three fields, with the values fetched from the data sources you have.

Navigate to the Report Definition page: Reporting Tools > XML Publisher > Report Definition

And follow the steps in the below screen shot.

Now try running the report and login as the respective CEO's and verify the report receipt in the Report Manager.

To make the CEO's to view only their own reports, you have to disable the User ID search in the Report Manager page. That can be done by removing the report distribution role from the user profiles.

The above tip might look simple in technical perspective but not in the business view. This matters a LOT!

Component missing from MouseOver Popup Setup. Contact Your System Administrator.

While creating a new component from the copy of several delivered pages, you might see this error on the MouseOver Popup feature.

"Component missing from MouseOver Popup Setup. Contact Your System Administrator."

The solution is simple. You can get there easily, if you are in the mid of a development. However, this error can kill your time, during an upgrade, making you read the related App Package codes and to figure out how my component got missed from the setup.

Solution: There is a setup for MouseOver Popup in 8.52, where you have to authorize a component (mainly happens with the custom ones), for the MouseOver feature.

The setup is under: Set Up HRMS > Common Definitions > Mouse Over PopUp > MouseOver Component Setup.

Provide the component name and the Person Detail view and you are done with the component setup for MouseOver Popup.

And the popup will work as expected.

Multiple Reports in SQR at ease

You can print multiple reports with ease using the simple structure below. 

DECLARE-REPORT can declare n number of reports (max 99) and use it for the respective printing. There is catch at this point. What if the reports are dynamic and you cannot forcast the number of reports that gets generated.

Then the below code can be handy.

You have the while loop and NEW-REPORT part inside it. Make the file name dynamic based on the variables in your code. And that's it. 

No headaches of declaring multiple reports in the begin-setup and you can get n number of reports (max infinity), without the limitation of 99.

Hope, this will be a handy code for you.

XML Publisher - Clean Up

Cleaning Up BI Publisher Metadata

Some people are very specific about the way the data is managed in the system. I have seen several Admins who is very serious about the accurate data in the system, they will always clean up the data in the system, like the perfect housewives maintains a good home. 

In BI Publisher we have a delivered way to do this act. The Application Engine program name is PSXPCLEAN. It tracks and manages the orphaned objects in the system and provides you a report too.

What the different sections does in the AE. It find outs the orphaned definitions to the state record and deletes it in a sequence.

Various sections performs this duty.

This application engine program is delivered in Report and Delete mode. To run the program in Report Only mode, open the application engine program PSXPCLEAN in Application Designer and remove the comment in the following statement in PSXPCLEAN:Main:Start PeopleCode action:

rem PSXPFILECLN_AET.REPORT_ONLY_FLAG = "Y" (which is marked in Yellow below)

From here, the AE starts collecting the info about the missing definitions.

From this point the clean up starts.

A handy tip to know about the AE and the main tables in XMP Publisher for quick reference.

My Reports with No Reports?

You might have came this scenario, if you have worked on the My Reports Pagelet. When you use it for the first time, the reports might now appear here.

When you click on the Report Manager link beneath, it takes you to the Explorer tab, where again you will get the same message.

But the Administration tab might be having the reports but not in the Explorer tab.

To rectify this and to start posting the reports to teh Explorer tab, which will ultimately display the data in the My Reports pagelet, you have to check and activate the following Routing - Service Operations at the Default Local Node.

• PSRF_FOLDER_CREATE
• PSRF_REPORT_CREATE
• PSRF_REPORT_DATE_CHANGE
• PSRF_REPORT_DELETE

Once you set this up and bounced the server (if required), the My Reports Pagelet will start populating the reports.