Parcel Service - Bursting Book with Dashboard - Dashboard is Table - No Results

[Clarke_Hair]

This is a follow-up to my prior post about Parcel Service.

Converted my excel worksheet to CV's and imbedded them in a Book.  That works great and I can pass parameters and burst without any issues.  In the Admin guide under the Book section it talks about adding a Report.  I added 4 Reports with Report Type = 'Dashboard Report' and 'Dashboard Chart' and selected the related Component Name.  There were two - One listed as a 'Large Data Pivot Grid' and one listed as 'Spreadsheet'.  When running the book, nothing gets created in the Excel workbook generated for these 4 new members.

I thought I saw somewhere that you could use a book to generate output from a Table.  In the above, the spreadsheet has a 'Table View' imbedded that works fine in Excel or in the Dashboard.  The Large Data Pivot Grid also works in the Dashboard.

Is my issue that it does not work with anything that is imbedded in Excel.  In writing this I went back and linked the Report to my Grid View item created from a Data Adapter.

So, what am I missing? Can I include a SQL query into a table in a book? or can this just not be done.

[JackLacava]

From the documentation - note the grey area at the end:

[Clarke_Hair]

Got it - It will not work with output being a excel doc!  Will it work with output being PDF (not ideal but aleast gets the data out)? or is there a different path to get the data stored in a table distributed via Parcel service (in a book, not in a book).  Just need ideas on how to get this data out to users - or is the answer that it is just 100% not possible in OS to get non-Cube data delivered via Parcel service in excel. 

[JackLacava · Accepted solution]

In a PDF you can include basically everything; the output will be a PDF file, though.

If you really only want to dump non-cube data in Excel files, there are a few different approaches.

• If your target users have the OneStream Excel Add-in, you can send them the Excel file containing the Table View - they will just refresh it to get the data. You should be able to add it to a Parcel Service package as it is, so it gets sent out together with your pdf book in a single zip file.
• If those users don't have the Add-In, then you will need a bit of coding, but you can easily produce a CSV file that can be opened in Excel. Basically the procedure would roughly be:

1. take what you have in your Table View code (i.e. the Spreadsheet business rule that powers it), place it into an Extensibility Rule under "Case is = ExtenderFunctionType.ExecuteDataMgmtBusinessRuleStep"
2. amend that rule to save the data as a csv file somewhere on the filesystem
3. Configure a Data Management step "Execute Business Rule" to run the rule, and include it into a Sequence
4. Configure your Parcel Service package to pick up the csv from the location where you expect it to be generated
5. When scheduling a PS run, make sure the task runs the other DM sequence first, so that the csv file will be there when PS tries to pick it up.

This is the easiest solution, from a coding perspective. There are alternatives that can generate proper Excel files instead of CSVs, but they require a bit of "dark" knowledge of DevExpress libraries that we're not at liberty to discuss.

[Clarke_Hair]

Excellent - Goal is non-licensed users so will go with the coding.  Will see about putting in an enhancement request as I can see us using this feature a lot and it would be similar to be able to skip the double step.  Thanks for the suggestion.

[Clarke_Hair]

Still need your direction.  I now have created .csv files and have them stored in the Applicaiton Database section of Documents.  I can see that Parcel Service can only attach Books, so I created a book that is just a File.  When opening the Book, it is blank.  So my question is how do I get the csv file added to the Parcel Service Package?  Do I have the csv file part of a book, if so, how does that work or can I attach it directly to the package.  Your instructions sound like i should be able to just grab the .csv file and not deal with a book but the XFDoc File Path only seems to see Books.