ReportServer Forum

karolina

Member

Registered: 2014-08-09

Scheduling questions

Hi,

I have 2 questions concerning report scheduling:

1. Date parameters

I have a report (dynamic list with variants) that has 2 date parameters. The first date may be fixed, but the second date value should always be "today", where "today" = date of report execution.
For example: I'd like to list all invoices and respective payments issued and paid from date1 to date2, where date1 is always 01.01.2015 and date2 is always a current date.

Is enough that I switch the second date parameter to formula and use ${today.addDays(0)} ? Or do I need a scheduled script that will set the date2 value?

2. Permissions for scheduled / e-mailed reports

Suppose we have a report R, User1 and User2.
User1 may execute report R and has all necessary rights to schedule or e-mail the report.
User2 has no rights for report R and should never see its results.
Is it possible, that User1 puts User2 on recipients list and, in fact, User2 gets the executed R report?

Cheers,
Karolina

Thorsten J. Krause

datenwerke

Registered: 2012-02-15

Website

Re: Scheduling questions

Hi Karolina,

1. Correct, just switch the second parameter to formula mode and use ${today} as the formula. You don't event need the addDays(0). When the report is executed manually or by the scheduler the formula gets replaced with the current date (and time).

2. A scheduled report is always executed with the permissions of the user that created the scheduler job and can also be received by users that would not have the necessary permissions to execute the report themselves. The reasoning is, if you scheduled the report just to yourself you could of course also just forward the emails to anyone else so why prevent this here.
If you want to limit the recipients a user can choose from you can use the read permission in the user tree to hide all invalid recipients.

Cheers,
Thorsten

karolina

Member

Registered: 2014-08-09

Re: Scheduling questions

Hi Thorsten,

Thank you for the quick answer

ad. 2 Yes, you're right, as in theory someone could e-mail the report to him/herself and then forward it. Actually, I needed to know if it is prevented or not.
In most cases limiting recipients will work.

Cheers,
Karolina

karolina

Member

Registered: 2014-08-09

Re: Scheduling questions

Hi,

Does it work like that: if a report (or, rather, a variant of the report) is scheduled for automatic execution,

1. permissions for the report and underlying datasources are connected with the user who schedules the report?
2. user variable parameter - its value is the value of variable of the user who schedules the report?
3. datasource parameters - the key value of the first row returned? or the key value recently used? or the key value used when the variant was saved the last time?

Cheers,
Karolina

Thorsten J. Krause

datenwerke

Registered: 2012-02-15

Website

Re: Scheduling questions

Hi Karolina,

reports executed by the scheduler behave exactly as if the user who created the job manually executes the report. The result of this execution is then sent to all the recipients.

1 & 2 correct
3 The parameter values the variant is saved with. So if you change a variant after you created a scheduled job for it the job will also pick up the changes. One notable exception are parameters that are still at their default value (parameters the user did not touch) here we don't store the effective value, but only the information to use the default value. So if you change the default value in the report definition all these reports pick up the changes.

Cheers,
Thorsten

karolina

Member

Registered: 2014-08-09

Re: Scheduling questions

Hi Thorsten,

Thanks!
ad. 3 Does that mean that:
- if the default value had been changed by a user, the scheduled report will take the picked value?
- if the default value had not been changed by a user, the scheduled report will take the default value?
- if the user had changed the default value, but later the admin changed the parameter default value, the scheduled report will take the changed report value?

Anyway, it looks like that in case of complex parameters it might be necessary to use scripts to set parameters values to have more control over the used values, right?

Cheers,
Karolina

Arno Mittelbach

datenwerke

Registered: 2012-02-14

Re: Scheduling questions

Hi Karolina,

scheduled reports always execute the currently stored version of a report. That is

- If a user changed the default value but did not store the variant, then the report is executed with the default value. If an admin later changes the default value, then from this point on the new default value is used.
- If a user changed the default value and stored the variant, the report will be executed with the value the user selected. Even if the admin later changes the default value the report will still be executed with the value the user selected. (The admin does, however, have the option to reset all parameter values to default in which case the new default value is picked up.)

What exactly are you trying to achieve? Scripts might be the best way to handle complex scheduling arrangements (for example, if the same report should be executed with different user settings) but I think I am not quite clear yet on what you want to implement.

Cheers
-Arno

karolina

Member

Registered: 2014-08-09

Re: Scheduling questions

Hi Arno,
Thanks!
Well, let's say I'm in the process of getting it clear myself
At this point I wanted to be more aware how this works without scripts.
Cheers,
Karolina