Including External Attachments with BI Publisher Reports

&inputFiles Array

For bursted and non-bursted reports provide an array where each array member specifies an absolute path to the single file or an absolute path to the directory that contains files to be converted.

By default, BI Publisher places the main report as the first document in the PDF report output, followed by the external attachments. The external attachments appear in the generated report in the order in which you define them in the array.

In all cases, the name of the merged output file (main report and external attachments) is the name of the BI Publisher report.

There are three variables that you can use in the &inputFiles array:

Example: String Array of Fully-Qualified Paths

This example represents a string array of fully-qualified paths to the external documents to merge with the main report. In this example, the documents in the report output will appear in the order of the array members.

&inputFiles.Push("D:\ExternalFiles\sdk\samplefiles\microsoft-word.doc");
&inputFiles.Push("D:\Temp\Rownumber.htm");
&inputFiles.Push("D:\ExternalFiles\sdk\samplefiles\jpeg-bitmap.jpg");
&inputFiles.Push("D:\ExternalFiles\sdk\samplefiles\microsoft-excel.xls");
&inputFiles.Push("%REPORTFILE%");  
/* in this example the main BI Publisher report is presented as the last */
/* document in the PDF output */

Example: String Array of Single Directories

This example represents an array of a single directory. All files contained in the directory will be converted to PDF documents and merged with the main report.

In this example the attachments in the report output will appear in alphabetical order. To achieve a specific order, rename the documents in the folder accordingly.

/* the main BIP report is presented as the first document in */
/* the PDF output */
&inputFiles.Push("%REPORTFILE%"); 
&inputFiles.Push("D:\Temp\ExternalFiles\%ALLFILES%");
/* Placeholder %ALLFILES% tells BI Publisher to use all documents contained */ 
/* in the folder D:\Temp\ExternalFiles */

Example: String Array of Multiple Directories (Bursted Reports)

This example shows an array of multiple directories named in accordance with the bursted value.

&inputFiles.Push("D:\Temp\ExternalFiles\%BTV%\%ALLFILES%"); 

In this case BI Publisher expects that directory D:\Temp\ExternalFiles has a set of sub-directories named as burst values. Each of the directories contains the documents for a specific bursted value.

For each bursted report, the documents in the BI Publisher output will appear in alphabetical order. Note that the main report will appear first in the output report if there is no %REPORTFILE% placeholder in the &inputFiles array.

The following example shows the Microsoft Windows directory structure where a BI Publisher report is bursted by SALES_ID 8501. In the example, the directory for SALES_ID is D:\Temp\ExternalFiles\8501.

This example illustrates a directory structure for a bursted report. All of the documents in the

Example: String Array of Multiple Directories and Multiple Static Files (Bursted Reports)

This example shows a string array that contains multiple directories named in accordance with the bursted value as well multiple static files to add to the bursted report.

This example also illustrates having a header page that separates a report from the converted PDF-formated attachments with a common text for each bursted report.

&inputFiles.Push("D:\Temp\ExteralFiles\attachment_header.rtf");
&inputFiles.Push("D:\Temp\ExternalFiles\%BTV%\%ALLFILES%"); 

To attach multiple static files to each bursted instance use the following syntax:

&inputFiles.Push("D:\Temp\ExternalFiles\COMMON_FILES\%ALLFILES%");  
&inputFiles.Push("D:\Temp\ExternalFiles\%BTV%\%ALLFILES%"); 

In the previous example, the directory D:\Temp\ ExternalFiles\COMMON_FILES is a container for commonly used files for each bursted report instance.

Unicode Support for External Document Paths and Filenames

Unicode characters are supported in the external document paths and filenames.

This includes fully-qualified paths as well as directory paths containing files with Unicode characters in their names.

The following example shows Unicode characters in a full-qualified path:

&inputFiles.Push("D:\ExternalFiles\sdk\VEŘEJNÉ\microsoft-中word.doc");

The following example shows a directory path to a filename that contains Unicode characters:

&inputFiles.Push("D:\Temp\ExternalFiles\%ALLFILES%");

where D:\Temp\ExternalFiles contains a file such as русский_язык_test.txt.

Application servers and Process Scheduler servers running on Unix or Linux platforms require the character set portion of the shell locale to be one that supports Unicode, such as UTF-8.

Understanding Setting PDF Attachment Conversion Timeout

When you set a timeout for PDF conversion, if the PDF conversion process is not finished within the specified time, the process is terminated, an error displays, and details are logged in the log file.

For bursted BI Publisher reports the conversion timeout value is used for report attachments for each bursted report instance

The PeopleCode runtime method overrides the value defined in the Global Settings and can be used in cases where relatively large files or a large numbers of files are expected. It also makes sense to increase the timeout interval at runtime in cases when a report is running via process scheduler (PRCS) and execution time is not a priority.

Setting PDF Attachment Conversion Timeout Programmatically

To set the PDF attachment conversion timeout programmatically, use the following PeopleCode:

&oRptDefn.setPDFConversionTimeOut(&oitTimeOut); 

Where oitTimeOut is a timeout value in seconds.

Setting PDF Attachment Conversion Timeout in the Global Properties

You must have the Report Developer role to set the timeout property in the Global Properties.

To set the PDF attachment conversion timeout in the Global Properties:

1. Select Reporting Tools > BI Publisher > Setup > BIP Global Properties.

   The Global Properties page appears.

2. From the Property Group drop-down list, select PeopleTools Settings.

3. For the psxp_pdfconversion_timeout property, enter a value (in seconds) in the Text column. The default value is 20 seconds.

4. Click the Save button.