Use this page if you need advanced technical information about IFS Business Reporter.
By default when IFS Business Reporter is installed, security is set so that the MS Office trusts only the files saved on the installed machine. This means that an error will occur when trying to open a file stored on a remote shared folder. However these files can be accessed by setting trust on the shared folder via Trust Center settings under Excel Options. Please follow the instructions below.
It is possible to view executed IFS Business Reporter (BR) reports in IFS EE. By default this is functionality is not activated, meaning that when a IFS Business Reporter report is ordered via the Order Report dialog, the resulting report is opened in MS Excel.
There is however a possibility to activate an IFS Business Reporter viewer that can open a read-only version if the executed report.
The first thing to do is to change a system parameter. This is done in in the BR System Parameters window in Solution Manager. Modify the parameter named IEE Feature for Previewing BR Reports and supply the value ifswin:Ifs.Application.BAReportViewer.BAReportViewer.
Figure 1:System Parameter Setting for the IFS Business Reporter Report Viewer
Note: If the setting should take effect for the current logged in user it is necessary to restart the IFS EE client.
All IFS Business Reporter reports are
available as shortcuts in the IFS EE navigator via the path Business Reporting &
Analysis\Published Content\BR Reports.
This makes it easier to find BR
reports rather then looking them up in the Order Report
dialog box.
Figure 2:IFS Business Reporter Reports in IFS EE Navigator
Running a report from the navigator now leads to that the report is loaded in the IFS Business Reporter viewer in read-only mode.
Figure 3:A IFS Business Reporter Report Opened in the IFS Business Reporter Report Viewer Feature in IFS EE
Note: PDF viewers will not work in certain combinations.
(e.g. Windows 8.1 with Adobe Acrobat Reader XI) leading to that the report will fail to
display inside IFS Enterprise Explorer. In such cases you may have to try
different PDF readers supported by the OS.
The
Foxit
PDF Reader is one possible option. It has been successfully tested on
Windows 8.1 (rendering a IFS Business Reporter report as PDF within IFS EE)
If it is required to open the report in IFS Business Reporter, use Open Business Reporter action in the viewer feature.
If the report is designed to execute as a PDF report, then clicking the button will open the report in the default application for PDF files.
Figure 4:Open currently viewed report in IFS Business Reporter
The Business Reporter report viewer functionality in the IEE client is not available in the Aurena client. When executing a Business Reporter report, the only option is to view the rendered report after downloading it to disk. Depending on how the report was designed, the downloaded report can be:
The following limitations apply when sending a IFS Business Reporter report by E-mail when ordered as a scheduled report task:
The solution is to first save the attached Microsoft Excel file to a local folder before opening it.
Do not save the report to a remote folder that is not shared/trusted.
The best solution to this problem is to install and set up IFS Business Reporter Execution Server.
If the response from the server takes longer time than the configured timeout settings, a Request Timeout Error will be raised. To overcome this, modify the timeout setting for the Application Server in use. Please refer to Application Server documentation for more information.
In cloud environments, the default timeout for the Azure Load Balancer is normally 4 minutes. This means that if a Business Reporter report is executed against an Azure cloud environment and the execution takes more than the current time limit, the report might finalize on the server side but will no be provided to the end user. To overcome this problem the timeout for the Azure Load Balancer must be increased.