Overview of Pre-generated Reports from SAS Web Report Studio

Understanding Pre-generated Reports

SAS Web Report Studio enables users to view reports with results from pre-generated queries. One advantage of providing pre-generated results is improved performance. Pre-generated reports are stored in the repository and are available for users to view. It takes less time to view these reports because the queries have already been processed and the results have already been generated. However, because these reports are non-interactive, they cannot accept input from a requesting user. When a pre-generated version of a report includes prompts (questions that require user input), the prompt values that were provided when the report was generated are used. The non-interactive nature also has important implications for security.
SAS Web Report Studio users can create pre-generated reports in several ways:
  • Users can save any report as a static report in PDF format. The report is saved in the repository and is made available to other authorized users who can distribute the report through a publication channel or to a list of e-mail addresses. Users cannot interact with a report that has been saved in PDF format.
  • When users save a report in SAS Web Report Studio, they can select the Data can be manually refreshed report type in the Save As dialog box. Typically, this type of report requires a manual refresh each time it is opened.
  • Users can schedule saved reports to be run at specified times. This feature enables users to refresh report data at specified intervals or times.
  • Users can create a snapshot of report data, and then distribute the static results to recipients.
The following sections describe the administration tasks that are associated with scheduling manually refreshed reports and distributing static snapshot reports.

Scheduled Reports and Distributed Reports

Scheduled reports and distributed reports vary slightly in their functions. The following table summarizes these two types of reports.
Summary of Scheduled and Distributed Reports
Type of Report
Description
Scheduled report
The report is scheduled to be updated at pre-determined times. When users open the report in SAS Web Report Studio, they can update the report data manually.
These reports can be archived in order to maintain older versions of the report.
Distributed report
The report is scheduled to be updated at pre-determined times. When the report is updated, SAS Web Report Studio creates a snapshot of report data, and then distributes the static results by e-mail to recipients and to publication channels that you specify.
For distributed reports, the snapshot that you distribute might include all or part of the original report. For example, suppose that your organization has sales teams in different countries, and you want to provide high-level sales information to the team managers in each country. When you set up a distribution, you can group the report based on the country, and then specify which managers should receive the sales information for each country. SAS Web Report Studio e-mails the appropriate version of the report to the specified recipients in either PDF or HTML format. Recipients cannot refresh or interact with the report that they receive.
Authorized users can use the report scheduling and distribution features to update pre-generated reports at specified times. In addition, these users have the option to send the reports directly to a specified list of users via e-mail. In order to enable users to schedule reports, a scheduling server must be configured. For information about configuring a scheduling server, see Scheduling in SAS. For information about scheduling reports in SAS Web Report Studio, see SAS Web Report Studio User’s Guide.

How Report Scheduling Differs from Report Distribution

The processes that you use to schedule and distribute reports are similar in several ways. Both tasks use wizards, and both rely on the rptbatch.bat executable to create output. In UNIX and z/OS, this executable is referred to as rptbatch.sh. The rptbatch.bat file resides in the SAS-configuration-directory\Lev1\ReportBatch directory. The report output generation tool, rptbatch.bat replaces the batch generation tool (batchgen.exe) that was included with previous releases. The rptbatch.bat file functions as a wrapper around the outputgen.exe file and is used to create output.
However, there are several differences between scheduling and distribution. The following table summarizes these differences:
Differences between Scheduling and Distributing Reports
Report Scheduling
Report Distribution
Reports are generated and stored in a repository.
Reports are generated and e-mailed to recipients that you specify in a recipient list.
Reports can be pushed to a publication channel. Publication channels are specified in the Schedule Report Wizard.
Reports can be pushed to a publication channel.
The full report is generated.
The full report can be distributed. Alternatively, the report can be divided by group breaks so that each recipient gets a subset of the report.
Users can schedule a folder for report generation. All reports in the folder are generated.
Users can set up distribution for only one report at a time.
Users can enable archiving for a report. If archiving is enabled, the latest report is archived when a new one is generated. The archive can retain multiple versions of the report.
Reports cannot be archived.
Scheduling does not include the ability to preview a schedule. No e-mail is sent, so a review is not required.
Users can run a test to preview the distribution of a report. To allow review of e-mail and prevent unintentional spamming to e-mail recipients, the test returns a recipient list either in the user interface or via an e-mail.
Users who receive the report can refresh and interact with the report. This action requires the report to be regenerated.
Users cannot refresh or interact with the report.
Note: A publication channel is an information repository that has been established by using the SAS Publishing Framework in SAS Management Console and which can be used to publish information to users and applications. If you publish your report to a publication channel, then authorized users and applications can access your report by subscribing to the channel. For example, the SAS Information Delivery Portal can list the content of a publication channel.

Required Role and Capabilities for Scheduling and Distributing Reports

In order to schedule or distribute reports, users must be assigned to the Advanced role to which certain scheduling and report distribution capabilities have been assigned. The Advanced role is a predefined role for users and administrators of SAS Web Report Studio. For information about predefined roles for SAS Web Report Studio, see Predefined Roles .
Identify which scheduling or distribution capabilities you want to assign to the Advanced role, and assign users to that role. Here is a list of scheduling and distribution capabilities available in the Advanced role:
Advanced Scheduling:Distribute
Enable a distribution
Advanced Scheduling:Save Archive
Archive file versions. When creating a pre-generated version of a report (for example, a scheduled report), a version of the report is archived as a PDF file. Reports with archived versions are visually different in report selection dialog boxes, and access is allowed to these archived versions.
Advanced Scheduling:Schedule Any Report
Schedule any report to which the users have WriteMetadata access, including the reports that they have authored.
Advanced Scheduling:Schedule Folder
Schedule a folder. Every report in the chosen folder is processed into a pre-generated report.
Administrative:Manage Distribution List
Create, edit, or delete a distribution list.
CAUTION:
Use of this capability creates a new physical table.
Therefore, this capability must be restricted to few users. Initially, this capability is not assigned to any SAS Web Report Studio role.
Users who have been assigned Administrative:Manage Distribution List capability must also have ReadMetadata and WriteMetadata permissions to the directory where the table will be created. These permissions are required to enable the users to create, edit, or delete a distribution list. In the initial configuration, ReadMetadata is granted to SASUSERS via the Default ACT, but WriteMetadata is denied and must be granted manually. You can either grant the WriteMetadata permission to the SASUSERS group, or to a custom group of users who have the Administrative:Manage Distribution List capability. For easier management of users assigned to this capability, you can create a new role with this single capability added to that role, and then assign users to this role. Users assigned to this role can maintain these tables. The table will be created in the directory referenced by the distribution library (for example, SASApp-wrsdist).
Note: In addition to the preceding role requirements, you must have configured a SAS Trusted User (sastrust) during installation in order to schedule or distribute reports. The sastrust identity is used to establish a trust relationship with the metadata server.

User Accounts for Scheduling Reports

In SAS Web Report Studio 4.31, reports can be scheduled only by regular users with a SAS identity. SAS internal accounts require logon with @saspw suffix in the user ID that is submitted (for example, sastrust@saspw). SAS internal accounts are not intended to perform tasks that are typically performed by regular users. Therefore, internal accounts cannot be used to schedule reports.

Locale Specification for Scheduled and Distributed Reports

Beginning with the second maintenance release for SAS Web Report Studio, the locale preference that is specified in SAS Preferences Manager is applied to all reports that are scheduled and distributed by users. The SAS Preferences Manager provides a common mechanism for managing preferences for all SAS Web applications. This feature enables administrators to set default preferences for locale, theme, alert notification, and time, date, and currency display. For more information about the SAS Preferences Manager, see SAS Intelligence Platform: Middle-Tier Administration Guide.
The locale specified in SAS Preferences Manager is applied to all reports that are scheduled via these methods:
  • Platform Suite for SAS
  • SAS In-process scheduling for SAS Web Report Studio
In previous versions of SAS Web Report Studio, the default locale for the Java environment where the schedule executed was applied to the reports. In the second maintenance release for SAS Web Report Studio, if a locale is not specified in SAS Preferences Manager, the default locale for the Java environment where the schedule executes is applied to the reports.

How Users Interact with Manually Refreshed Reports

Scheduled reports can be manually refreshed when users open the report.
The following list explains how users interact with manually refreshed reports:
  • A user cannot interact with a manually refreshed report until the user refreshes the report. Manually refreshed reports open very quickly and show data from the last update of the report.
  • If a user saves changes to the live version of a report, then the original, static version of the report is deleted.
  • If a user saves changes to the live version of a report and specifies that the report can be manually refreshed, then a new static version of the report is generated and saved (along with the revised live report). If the user selects the Retain previous instances of output not to exceed check box, the report's archive is created and or updated.
  • If a user saves changes to the live version of a report using a different name for the report, then the original version of the report is preserved. In this case, a version of the revised report is not generated.
  • The ability to select Refresh Data is controlled by the role-based capability Basic: Refresh Data. By default, this capability is assigned to all users, but the administrator can modify the default setting by restricting this functionality to specific groups.
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