Supporting Report Distribution :: SAS® Visual Analytics 7.4: Administration Guide

Introduction

This topic helps administrators support the report distribution feature that the designer provides. For user instructions, see Sharing Reports with Other Users in the SAS Visual Analytics: User’s Guide.

Here are the key points:

In the designer, the FileDistribute Reports menu item is available to only those users who have the Distribute Reports capability.
Use only the designer to schedule and distribute SAS Visual Analytics reports. (If you use the Schedule Manager plug-in to SAS Management Console, and you set an option that is not available in the designer, the report job might be incompatible with the designer.)
Log output for report distribution is in the SAS Visual Analytics Hyperlink Services log. The logging context is com.sas.bicommon.distribution. See Adjusting the Logging Configuration.
Report jobs and distributions (job flows) are stored in user-specific folders beneath a folder that is referenced by a configuration property. See va.baseSchedulingFolder.

About the Scheduling Server

Report distribution uses distributed in-process scheduling. See Setting Up Scheduling Using SAS Distributed In-Process Scheduling in Scheduling in SAS.

A SAS Java Batch Server of the sub-type Visual Analytics Scheduled Distribution is required. The predefined SAS Java Batch Server is named

Visual
                        Analytics Scheduled Distribution

.

About the Size of Email Attachments

How Size Limits Are Defined

Reports are distributed as PDF attachments to email messages. Size limits for emails are established as follows:

Most email systems limit the size of attachments. If an email system rejects an attachment due to size, report distribution uses special handling for any future attempts to send emails that are the same size (or larger). Report distribution’s knowledge of email system size limits is reset when the SAS Web Application Server restarts.
You can use the configuration properties va.distribution.email.aggregate.attachments.mb and va.distribution.email.attachment.mb to set explicit size limits. See How to Set Configuration Properties.

Tip
Because report distribution adapts to actual rejections from an email system, it is rarely necessary to set explicit size limits.

How Oversize Email Attachments Are Handled

For a report distribution email with attachments that exceed a known size limit, the following results occur:

If there are multiple attachments, report distribution attempts to distribute the attachments among multiple messages. The user who requests the report distribution is notified that multiple emails have been sent.
Any individual attachment that exceeds the size limit is removed from the email. The email indicates that an attachment was omitted due to a size limit.

If a report distribution email is rejected by an email system due to a (previously unknown) size limit, report distribution’s knowledge of email system’s size limits is updated to reflect the rejection.

Note: If size limits are explicitly set (in configuration properties), the new limits that are in effect are lower than the configured limits.