This week I was finalizing a job that we migrated from ReportWorq version 4 to version 5. I was on auto-pilot and basically ensuring everything was correct with the migration. The report is about 6mg, just over 20 worksheets, with a couple of thousand rows on most of them. Definitely not something easily looked at on your smartphone.
I went back to the Distribution page for the report to see if I could exclude the file from the email. The email would just be a notification that the report is available and provide the link to the saved folder. After a couple of minutes going through the options, I realized this wasn’t available. The file is always attached to the email if email is picked for a Destination.
When selecting both File and Email for Destinations, an option to exclude the file as an attachment in the email would be handy. This would prevent large report files from being emailed. A link to the stored file can be manually added (ie copy the path in Network Location and insert it as a link) in the body of the email. The email would just become a notification for the user that the report is ready and where to go to view it.
Hopefully others might find this enhancement useful.
Duane
Other’s are certainly interested in this because we actually have an enhancement logged to distribute the file through one mechanism and a notification through another. The popular example is to store the files on SharePoint or the Network, but send the link via email. And thinking through this with a fresh perspective it’s as simple as adding an Attach output files option to each of the distribution types which has a messaging component (Slack, Teams & Email). Then, for example, you could distribute to Google Drive and Slack, but send the files to GDrive and send the notification to Slack, with very little new user interface. One addition I would add to this is a new Variable type called Distribution. This variable would contain URL’s or folder names for each of the distributors, which would make it much easier to include a link to the SharePoint file in the email that’s being sent.
We’re on a short feature freeze, but I don’t see anything overly complicated about this enhancement request and it certainly improves the product. We’ll strive to include this in the December sprint.
Also for those who don’t know you can exclude the file output by simply not selecting an output format. This is useful for creating a newsletter where you want to include charts and commentary in an email but no files attached. That feature isn’t quite enough for this use case,
We just posted Preview Build 5.0.1.86 which includes a new option to Include Attachments on any distributor that also has a message field (Teams, Slack and Email). More work is needed on our cloud components before Teams will be fully supported, however it is now possible to post a file to a SharePoint site and also send an email w/o the attachment. This option will be enabled by default, but unchecking the box will exclude the attachments.
Version 5.0.1.86 also contains some new updates to the Running Jobs and History screens. So be on the lookout for changes in those areas with the upgrade.
