Burst Email Link to Non-Users

[Birdie]

Hi All-

I'm wondering if there is a way to email the report link from a specified network drive while bursting in 8.3. I've set up the reports to save to a network drive and dynamically rename the pdf file output based on a burstkey.

My issue now is that when I email the link to users (using bursting), they have to have a Cognos login to access the file. Some of my users are not Cognos users though. I don't want to attach the report though, because the name is generic (and does not contain the burst key).

Is anyone aware of how to schedule via Cognos and send the Network location as the email link?

Thanks!
Birdie

[damienm]

Hey mate,
Would love to know how you managed to rename the pdfs!

[Birdie]

There's a couple different ways to rename them (out on the Cognos KnowledgeBase). If you're using SDk, there's a javascript sample you can implement to rename the files. Otherwise, you can use this link for the script copies and a pdf that (kind of!) explains how to implement. I had to mess with the configuration a bit to get the files to save to my liking, but all in all it worked.

http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/data/library/cognos/page193.html

On a side note- I did figure out the solution to send a network link to non-Cognos users if anyone is interested.

Thanks!
Birdie

[vivek_vdc]

Birdie - Can you share your solution on sending a network link to non-Cognos users to view Cognos burst reports?

[Birdie]

Hi Vivek-

Essentially how I achieved it was to burst the output to a network drive (the drive has to be relative to the bin directory on the Cognos server). Then, I allowed full access to users in the folder where the report will be saved. You can just allow "Read Only" as well, fyi.

Once the reports were saved out, I have a script (see link above) to rename the pdf to the Burst Key. It was also a requirement to have the reports emailed as a link rather than an attachment, as well as to have a dynamic subject line on the email based on the recipient. To do this part, I created an Event in Event Studio which was based off of a package which linked the Cognos Content Store BurstKey back to the database where my "burst" qualifier is stored.

Finally, I scheduled a job to run the bursted reports and then the Email Event.

I actually made some detailed documentation for this which I can share with you if you'd like.

[coreytome]

Hi birdie

Coudl you share more in detail how you did it?  Im  familiar with event studio but could not duplicate it.

Thank you corey
Corey1tome@gmail.com