Understanding Run Control IDs

To run a report, you must tell the system when and where you want the report to run. For example, you might tell the system to run the report on the database server at midnight or on a Microsoft Windows server every Sunday afternoon, or you might tell it to run the report immediately. For most reports, you must also set parameters that determine the content of the report, such as the business unit or time period on which to report.

A run control is a database record that provides values for these settings. Instead of entering the same values each time you run a report, you create and save a run control with those settings. The next time that you run the report, you select the run control, and the system completes the settings.

You can create run controls that apply to several related reports. For example, suppose that all of the reports that you run at the end of a month require the same parameters: business unit, department, and from and to dates. You can create a single run control that provides values for these parameters and use it for every report.

Conversely, you can create several run controls for the same report to manage different situations. For example, you can create one run control that sets the parameters for a quarterly report and another run control that sets them for a year-to-date version of the same report. Each time that you run the report, you select the appropriate run control. This way, you can print several variations of the same report without changing the settings every time.

A run control ID is used as a key (with a user ID) for records that contain the parameters that a process needs at runtime. Storing the parameters in a table that the process can query using the run control ID and user ID enables the process to run without user intervention. Run control IDs are stored in a minimum of two tables: an application run control table and the Tools Run Control table (PSPRCSRQST). You can examine the PS_PRCSRUNCNTL table as a sample application run control table.

The PeopleTools Run Control table stores information that is required by PeopleSoft Process Scheduler, such as output type, format, distribution, file dependency, and destination. The application run control table stores information that is required to run a process, such as the from date, department ID, employee ID, and so on. All application run control tables are keyed by user ID and run control ID.