Delivery Email Subject and Body

If report definition output is sent to an email address, you can define a customized subject and body for the email message. To utilize this enhancement, a data dictionary glossary item (glossary group E) must be associated with the report definition.

Glossary group E designates error, warning, and information messages. If a message contains values that will be substituted by data items from a data structure, the message will have a placeholder for each text-substituted value. The placeholders are indicated by an ampersand (&) and a number in the message text.

The following example shows a custom data dictionary glossary item with text-substitution placeholders. This glossary item could be used as the email subject and body for a report definition that produces customer invoices.

In this example, &1 could be the date of the invoice and &2 the type of invoice. Invoices can be produced on a daily, weekly, bi-weekly, semi-monthly, or monthly basis. When users submit the report definition, they can enter values for the &1 and &2 variables so that the subject of the email could be "Your 6/30/10 Invoice," and the body of the message could be "Your 6/30/10 monthly invoice is attached to this email message. If you have questions about your account, please contact our Customer Service department as soon as possible. Thank you."

Data Structure Template

Text-substituted values are defined by data dictionary items in the data structure associated with a data dictionary glossary item. The Data Structure Template tab shows the name of the associated data structure. In the following example, a custom data structure template has been associated with the glossary item.

The data structure consists of a data item for each text-substituted value in the subject and body of the glossary data item. Because the message in this example has two text-substituted values, the associated data structure consists of two data items, as shown in the following example.