How to schedule a Web Intelligence report to a printer?

Purpose:

The purpose of this page is to clarify the understanding of the system logic and requirements in relation to scheduling of Web Intelligence reports to a printer in Business Objects Enterprise 3.1 as well as BI Platform 4.0

Overview:

As we all know that unlike Crystal reports and Desktop Intelligence Reports, the function to schedule a Web Intelligence reports to a printer is not possible. A workaround is in place which will enable us to implement this functionality in a very convenient manner.

Concepts Used:

The concepts that we are going to use are:

• Scheduling of a Web Intelligence Report to a File System in a PDF format.
• Usage of a very simple batch file.

Application of the Concepts:

Let us take a scenario for 3 different Web Intelligence reports:  Report1, Report2 and Report3.

Similarly, we may have multiple printers in the environment e.g. Printer1, Printer2 and Printer3

1.     First and the foremost, we will create 3 folders on Business Objects server or any network drive which will represent each printer that we are going to use.

2.     We will name each Folder as Printer1, Printer2 and Printer3.

3.     When we access each folder, it should look like \\machinename\Printer1

4.     If the folder has been created locally on the BOBJ server, then it will look like C:\Printer1

5.     Logon to CMC > Servers > Adaptive Job Server > Destinations.

6.     Enable the File System destination on the same.

7.     On the Business Objects server, ensure that all the printers which we are going to use (Printer1, Printer2 and Printer3) are configured.

8.     Go to Start > Devices and Printers > Printer1

9.     Ensure that the printer is shared and you are able to access the printer queue using an UNC patch. e.g.  \\xyz.abc.com\Printer1

10.   If you directly open the above path through Start > Run, It should open the printer queue.

11.   Next, we need to use a simple script which will send our report to the printer. Following is the script which we are going to use:

echo off
print /d\\xyz.abc.com\Printer1 \\machinename\Printer1*.*
del /q “\\machinename\Printer1*.*”

Save the above as ScriptPrinter1.bat on your machine.

The above script which we have created needs to be uploaded in the BOE as a Program file and schedule it with a recurrence of 1 minute

How is this going to work?

If we want to schedule a Report1 to Printer1, we will schedule this report in a PDF format to the following File System \\machinename\Printer1 or C:\Printer1 (in case the folder was created locally on the BOBJ Server). As soon as the schedule is a success, the PDF file will be created on the location.

Once the report is scheduled successfully, within a minute the script will run and it will send the PDF file for printing. As soon as the file is sent for printing, it will also make sure that the file gets deleted so that the files do not pile up inside that folder.

If you are using multiple printers, you can upload multiple scripts wherein each script will be sending the print command to a specific printer. You will have to edit the script before uploading it to Business Objects Enterprise. Similarly you also need to have multiple folders, where each folder will be used for a specific printer.

Since there will be a multiple schedules running every minute (for the batch file) it will create a huge instance history, so you can restrict the instance limit to 10.

Prerequisites:

1.     The account under which SIA is running should have read/write access on the folder to which we are going to schedule the Web Intelligence reports.

2.     The Printer is shared and the print queue is accessible through a network path.

3.     Run scripts/binaries is enabled from CMC > Applications > Program Object Rights area.

4.     We have supplied the OS credentials in Program Object Rights area.

Related Content:

Related Documents: An enhancement request has already been made to the Product Group at ideas place https://cw.sdn.sap.com/cw/ideas/2447 . However there is no information about when this will be included in the product.