So you have a report developed in Crystal Reports that needs to be distributed to 10 associates in your company weekly.  This part of the Enterprise Server is for you.  There are a few ways that this can be done.  Using InfoView, the associates could view the reports themselves using that web site.  This is a pull method and usually it is easier to push the report to these folks.  So let us send an email every week to our end users.

First, we need to get your report into Enterprise server.  To do this in a drag and drop manner, you will simply log onto your server.  This assumes that you have already installed Business Objects Enterprise Server.  We will upload a document using the administrative tools.  As an administrator you can set it up so other users can upload reports and other documents to the Enterprise Server as well. 

To upload, you need to have access to the Central Management Console.  See figure 1 to see what this looks like.

Figure 1

In the CMC make sure to create a folder where you want to view your reports.  Using the Folders you can organize where your content is to reside.  For instance, if you organize through departments, you might make your folders hierarchical by department.  Take care in deciding on this setting.  Figure 2 shows an example of how the folders will appear to an end user utilizing InfoView. 

Figure 2

When creating your folders, you can assign rights, create keywords for searching, create subfolders within the folder, and add objects to the folder.  When editing folder properties, the administrator can also limit how many instances of an object are allowed on the server.  This can help administrators in keeping the size of your instance of Business Objects under control.

To add a report to your folder, just use the New Object button to upload the report to the server.  Besides reports you can upload object packages, Microsoft Excel, Word and PowerPoint, Rich Text files, Text files, programs or hyperlinks.  There is also a place to change the folder name and you can opt to place this in the object repository.

Once you upload that object, you can add some more functionality to the report using the administration module.  For instance, you can schedule the report to run.  As you can see with Figure 3, the scheduling module allows you to specify a destination (email, file, or inbox).  You can also use the notification option to put in place audit trails for these scheduled jobs.  There is also a place to specify the format of the report when it is sent.  Most formats your expect from Crystal are available here.  Using the Schedule for option, you can specify users available in Enterprise Server for this report.

Figure 3

In this module you can also set different rights for this report.  You can also see a history of the scheduled objects here.  The history tab shows all instances of the report and whether server successfully sent them.  By clicking on a successful send, you can view that instance of the report (good for snapshots).  You an also resend that instance of the report if needed from this screen.

As you can see this part of the administration of Business Objects is robust with much you can do with it.  We will now explore the Interface to the end user using InfoView