Actions - Distribution

Mail & Deploy Team

Modified on: Wed, 6 May, 2020 at 8:41 AM

In this section, you will find all available actions for distributing reports.

Distribute by E-Mail

This action can be used to distribute report documents that have been previously created and/or external file attachments by e-mail.

General Attributes
You can set the following general attributes:

E-Mail Server	The e-mail server to use to send the e-mail (see E-Mail Servers).
Sender E-Mail Address	The sender e-mail address to use to send the e-mail.
Reply-to E-Mail Address	The reply-to e-mail address to use.
Subject	An expression (see Expressions) that evaluates to the subject to be used when sending the e-mail.
Body Type	This setting determines how the body of the e-mail is sent. Expression. If you use this type, an expression field will appear where you can enter an expression (see Expressions) that will evaluate to the body. HTML Report Document. If you use this type, you can use a previously created report document of file type HTML to use as the body. In this case, the e-mail body will itself be the content of the HTML report document.

Attachments
This list allows you to manage all attachments you want to be added to the e-mail. You can manage attachments by using the following buttons:

	Click this button to create a new attachment; a context menu will open that allows you to select which type of attachment you want to create.
	Click this button to edit the currently selected attachment.
	Click this button to delete the currently selected attachment.

External File
This type of attachment allows you to add an external file to the e-mail. The following attributes can be set:

Attachment Name

An expression (see Expressions) that evaluates to the name of the attachment.

File Path

An expression (see Expressions) that evaluates to the full path to the file to attach. Please note, that this file needs be reachable from Mail & Deploy Server, because the action will be executed there. Therefore, the following requirements have to be met:

The user that runs Mail & Deploy Server needs to have sufficient user rights to read the file.
The file path needs to be reachable from the computer on which Mail & Deploy Server runs; this might require to use UNC file paths in some cases. Please note that mapped network drive letters cannot be used, even if the user that runs Mail & Deploy Server has a mapped network drive set up.

Report Document
This type of attachment allows you to add a previously created report document to the e-mail. The following attributes can be set:

Attachment Name	An expression (see Expressions) that evaluates to the name of the attachment.
Report Document	The report document you want to attach. This needs to be a report document that has been created by a Create Report Document Action in the same task.

Recipients
This section lets you control who shall receive the e-mail.

Please note that a combination of different recipient types (dynamic and static) is possible.

Basic Attributes
The following basic attributes can be set:

Send to Dynamically Assigned Users	If you tick this option, the e-mail will be sent to e-mail addresses of users that have been dynamically assigned (see Actions - Report Document Assignment) to the report document. These dynamical e-mail recipients will receive all external file attachments but only those report document attachments to which they have been dynamically assigned.
Send to Dynamically Assigned E-Mail Addresses	If you tick this option, the e-mail will be sent to e-mail addresses that have been dynamically assigned (see Actions - Report Document Assignment) to the report document. These dynamic e-mail recipients will receive all external file attachments but only those report document attachments to which they have been dynamically assigned.
Send to Active Directory User Group(s)	If you tick this option, the e-mail will be sent to all users who belong to any of the active directory user groups with the names you can specify by the expression (see Expressions). This expression can return one or more names of active directory user group names.
Send to E-Mail Addresses	If you tick this option, the e-mail will be sent to all e-mail addresses resulting from the given expression (see Expressions).

Static E-Mail Recipients
The list of static e- groups who will receive the email. These recipients can be managed using the following buttons:

	Click this button to add a new e-mail recipient; a context menu will open that allows you to select which type of e-mail recipient you want to add.
	Click this button to remove the currently selected e-mail recipient.

Save Report Document to File System

This action can be used to save a previously created report document to the file system. The following attributes can be set:

Report Document

The previously created report document to save to the file system.

File Path

An Expression (see Expressions) that evaluates to the full path of the file to save the report document to. The file path needs to be without the file type extension because Mail & Deploy will add the extension automatically. important to note that the report document will be saved to the file system by Mail & Deploy Server and therefore the following requirements have to be met:

The user that runs Mail & Deploy Server needs to have sufficient user rights to write to the directory.
The file path needs to be reachable from the computer on which Mail & Deploy Server runs; this might require to use UNC file paths in some cases. Please note that mapped network drive letters cannot be used, even if the user that runs Mail & Deploy Server has a mapped network drive set up.

Save Report Document as Images to File System

This action can be used to save individual pages of a previously created report document to the file system. Each page of the report document will be saved as an individual image file; the following table indicates what a page is in regards to the file type of the created report document:

When the report document is an Adobe PDF Document or an Adobe PDF/A Document, each page of the PDF document will be saved to an individual image file.
When the report document is a Microsoft Excel Workbook, each worksheet of that workbook will be treated as a page and thus saved to an individual image file.
When the report document is a Microsoft PowerPoint Presentation, each slide of that presentation will be treated as a page and thus saved to an individual image file.
When the report document is a Microsoft Word Document, each page of that document will be saved to an individual image file.

All other file types cannot be converted to images. The following attributes can be set:

Report Document	The previously created report document to save as images to the file system.
Image Type	The file type to create the images in. BMP Image. If you select this file type, bitmap images will be created. PNG Image. If you select this file type, PNG images will be created. JPEG Image. If you select this file type, JPEG images will be created.
DPI	The DPI setting to apply to saved images.
File Path	An Expression (see Expressions) that evaluates to the full path of the file to save the image to. The file path needs to be without the file type extension because Mail & Deploy will add the extension automatically. important to note that the image will be saved to the file system by Mail & Deploy Server and therefore the following requirements have to be met: The user that runs Mail & Deploy Server needs to have sufficient user rights to write to the directory. The file path needs to be reachable from the computer on which Mail & Deploy Server runs; this might require to use UNC file paths in some cases. Please note that mapped network drive letters cannot be used, even if the user that runs Mail & Deploy Server has a mapped network drive set up. The following expression parameters (see Expression Parameter) are available: PageNumber. The page for which an image is currently being created

Distribute Report Document to Hub Report Document Library

This action can be used to distribute a previously created report document to the hub report library (see Hub) of users and/or user groups.
General Attributes
You can set the following general attributes:

Report Document	The report document you want to distribute. This needs to be a report document that has been created by a Create Report Document Action in the same task.
Name	An expression (see Expressions) that evaluates to the name the report document shall have in the library.
Description	An expression (see Expressions) that evaluates to the description the report document shall have in the library.

Recipients
This section lets you control to which users and/or user groups you want to distribute the report document.

The following basic attributes can be set:

Distribute to Dynamically Assigned Users

If you tick this option, the report document will be distributed to the library of users that have been dynamically assigned (see Actions - Report Document Assignment) to the report document.

Static Recipients
The list of static recipients lets you manage user and/or user groups who will get the report document into their library. These recipients can be managed using the following buttons:

	Click this button to add a new recipient; a context menu will open that allows you to select which type of recipient you want to add.
	Click this button to remove the currently selected recipient.

Upload Report Document to FTP

This action can be used to upload a previously created report document to an FTP server. The following attributes can be set:

Report Document	The previously created report document to upload to an FTP server.
Host	The hostname or IP address of the FTP server.
Port	The port of the FTP server.
SFTP True	True. The SSH File Transfer Protocol (SFTP) is used for the upload. False. The File Transfer Protocol (FTP) is used for the upload.
Use Credentials	True. The given credentials are used to authenticate against the FTP server. In this case, you need to specify a Username and Password. False. The FTP upload will be done using anonymous access to the FTP server.
Remote File Path	An Expression (see Expressions) that evaluates to the remote path to upload the file to. The remote path needs to include the file name (without the file extension) and folders need to be separated using a forward slash (/). Mail & Deploy will automatically ensure that the required directory structure exists by creating directories if they do not exist. Example: If you have specified a hostname of "testftpserver", not checked SFTP, a port of 21 and a remote path of "folder1/folder2/filename", then the file will be uploaded to "ftp://testftpserver:21/folder1/folder2/filename".