Setting Up Report Bursting for Designer Reports

Report bursting is the process of creating a single base report that delivers different results to each person viewing that report. For example, you could create a report for sales in all sales regions by sales representative. When the report is distributed, it is customized for each sales representative to contain only information about the customers in the sales rep's region.

To set up report bursting, you create two reports:

A report with the content you want to distribute.

A distribution report containing the email addresses of the recipients. In addition, the distribution report contains a column with a column name that matches a filtered column parameter in the content report. This column is used to customize or limit the content that recipients receive.

High-Level Steps to Set Up Report Bursting

Create the content report to be distributed with a filter on the column to use to filter the data.

If the data does not already exist in Birst, upload a data source (for example, an Excel spreadsheet) with the column Email and another column that matches the filtered column parameter in the content report.

Create the distribution report that will be used to distribute the content report.

Create a schedule to run your content report and have it distributed to the recipients in the distribution report.
Optionally, you can then test the notification.

Creating the content report

In Designer, create the report to be bursted. This is the content report that you want to distribute.
Add a filter to the column you want to filter on. For example, for each employee to receive a report containing only the information that pertains to that employee, you can add an Employee Full Name filter.
Select Display as the Filter Type and check the Prompted box. Selecting Display as the Filter Type makes the report run only once.
To ensure the prompt value is passed properly, you need to change the prompt name to match the column name.
Save the report.

Creating a data source with the necessary columns for the distribution report

If the information does not already exist in Birst, create a file (such as an Excel spreadsheet) containing the column Email with the email addresses of the users to distribute the report.
Include a column that matches a filtered column parameter in the content report, such as Employee Full Name.
Upload the new source and process. No joins are necessary. See Uploading Flat Files.

Creating the distribution report

In Designer, create a new report and add Emailas the first column.

Important: The logical name of the column must be "Email". It is not sufficient to rename the column in the report.
Add another column to the report that is the column you are using to filter the content report.

For example, if Employee Full Name is used, the content report will filter the data based on Employee Full Name. Then when the report is scheduled, a report for each employee is sent to the email address associated with the Employee Full Name.

Important: The report must contain a table and no chart.

Note: In this example, the Email column contains the same email address for each employee. In practice, it would contain a different email address for each employee.
Save the report.

Creating a schedule to run the content report and distribute it based on the distribution report

Navigate to Admin > Space Management > Select a Space > Notifications.
Click + Create New Notification.
Specify the Name of the new notification.
Specify an email address in the Fromfield.
Select Report Driven as the as the email To type.
Click the Foldericon in the Search Reports field to select a report. The Report Catalog is displayed. Select a report from the list.
Complete the remaining fields for the notification.

Tip: You can use a report parameter in the email subject in order to use the prompt value from the report to customize the subject. For example:
Customer Listing for $P{Employee Full Name}
Select the Attachment Format for the notification.
Click Save.

Test the notification

From the Notifications List panel, click the Actionsicon for the notification you want to test.
Click Run now to test the report bursting. Optionally, you can Edit, Move, Duplicate, and Delete the notification.

When the report is run, each email recipient will receive a customized report containing information on their customers.

Note: In this example, each report was sent to the same email address.