Scheduled report with no data.. prevent from emailing? -

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Jeroen

Basic Member

Posts: 6

4/22/2010 8:08 PM

Thanks for taking the time to read this

we're pretty new at Lawson in general (pre go-live stage), and I am appointed as the "LBI man",
so far so good, but I'm facing a constant challenge:

We have several Crystal Reports now, and some of them are scheduled in LRS to be delivered through email.

The nag is: when there is no data on the report (either because of bursting, or because the underlying query just turns up empty) there will still be an email, containing a .pdf file with...well, nothing.

I've searched the world to prevent empty reports from being sent but I have not been succesful.

Have any of you encountered the same issue and have been able to tackle it?

I would also be happy to learn about a way to change the subject of the email conditionally...like if there's no data, present that fact in the subject, or..provide a sum / count or the no. of records in the report as a part of the email's subject.

I have found neither of these two options anywhere, so any help would be appreciated.

Jeroen.

Matthew Nye

Veteran Member

Posts: 514

4/22/2010 8:22 PM

Id say about the closest you are going to get is inserting a hidden section in your Crystal Report that displays a note that there is no data when no rows are returned.

One possibility that I havent explored that is the use of System Variables. They are typically used in parameters but if they can be used in the Subject line of a schedule you might be able create customized server side code to check the number of rows returned. Probably a bit more work than you want to do for this but a thought.

You can always put in an Enhancement Request with Lawson and cross your fingures.

hth
Matt

Shane Jones

Veteran Member

Posts: 460

4/23/2010 11:12 AM

Might be a bit kludgey but...

Is there a way that you could use the system events schedule. I am thinking that you might be able to have a report run on a schedule where it looks for the system event and then when the system event either happens or does not happen it would trigger the emailed report.

I have not used the system events but I just looked at the help on EVENTS and it looks like you could create a pre-event that would look for something to decide if the report should run or not. If that is the case you could create an event that looks for data before running.

Shane Jones

Veteran Member

Posts: 460

4/23/2010 11:33 AM

Just played with the Events and you can create a "File-Based" event. I created a file-based event that looks for a file on the server. If you schedule a report with events and then setup the file as the "Event to wait for" you can stop the report if the file does not exist. The File that it would be looking for does not have to have anything in it... It just looks to see if the file exists.

Now use another program to drop a file in the location before you are running the Crystal report. You would only drop the file when your query has results. A stored procedure or process flow could easily drop a file in the location. (Come to think of it - I would probably try to do this in the reverse and make it run when no file exists so that if the first part of your process ever fails the users will get an empty report. The reverse might mean someone would not get a report when they should have.)

** This is not an ideal solution just because of the complexity and the fact that you will be relying on two programs to make this happen and three separte processes. (droping a file, running report, removing file) I still think it is possible and if you work the solution correctly the risk of one part failing would just mean that a user would get the empty report..... Good luck.

vishcom

New Member

Posts: 1

11/3/2010 11:19 PM

Can you tell me pls, how to schedule a report in LBI, as i am a new user I did get the device users on and had the test report sending to me ok, but when i use that for schedule from My Reports -> ->Details->then data settings/General Properties/ Data Settings/Output Options then New Schedule/Run Date and Time & Report Users .... am i missing something there ??

or to come to my email .. what am i exactly missing ... or what is the exact procedure .. thanks a lot in advance .. running version 9.0.3 (LBI)

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