Creating publish tasks

Publish tasks ensure that your reports are distributed to the right place and the right people.

Qlik NPrinting can apply task, report, and user filters before distributing reports. Each recipient receives reports with data that has been filtered for them. Reports can be published to the NewsStand, folders, Qlik Sense hub, and by email. You can also set up an automatic distribution schedule.

On the Publish tasks page, you can click the black triangles next to the header titles of any column to sort column items alphabetically.

Publish task times are displayed relative to the time zone of the logged in user. These may be different than the time zone of the Qlik NPrinting Server. You can change your time zone by clicking on your user name in the top right, and selecting Settings.

Reloading connection metadata

Metadata must be updated whenever you change the data structure or content of QlikView documents or Qlik Sense apps connected to Qlik NPrinting. This ensures that Qlik NPrinting is aware of these changes.

Creating new publish tasks

Do the following:

1. Select Tasks, and then select Publish tasks.
2. Click Create task.
3. Enter a Name for the task.
4. Select an App from the drop-down list.

5. Leave Days to keep as 1.

   This is the number of days that reports are kept on the server.

6. Leave Reports to keep as 1.

   This is the number of versions of the reports that are kept on the server.

7. Under Report security, you can input a Password to open, a Password to write, or both.
8. Under Notifications, you can select Send task notifications. See: Task execution notifications
9. Click Create.

   More task buttons appear.

Understanding Days to keep and Reports to keep

Days to keep and Reports to keep control how many copies of a report stay visible on the NewsStand, and for how long.

Rules:

• Every 30 minutes Qlik NPrinting searches for reports to be deleted, and removes them if needed.
• If within the Days to keep more reports are produced than Reports to keep, a deletion will be performed on the first check after midnight of the Days to keep plus one.
• If within the Days to keep fewer reports are produced than Reports to keep, a deletion will be performed on the first check after reaching Reports to keep plus one.
• If fewer reports are produced than Reports to keep, they will all be kept, even after the limit of Days to keep is reached.
• The oldest reports that exceed the maximum amount of Reports to keep are deleted.
• You cannot manually delete reports stored in the NewsStand. Deleting the file of reports from the storage folder does not remove reports from the NewsStand. You have to wait for automatic deletion.

• A report in different formats is considered as a single report. For example, if a task runs the same report in PDF and Excel format and Reports to keep is set to 1, only one of the reports will be saved on the NewsStand. The other report is considered a copy of the same report. To publish both reports, the Reports to keep option must be set to 2.

Example

• One task with one report which is run manually multiple times a day.
• Days to keep is set to 2.
• Reports to keep is set to 50.

 

Selecting reports to add

Do the following:

1. Click Reports in the main task menu.
2. Click Add report on the right.
3. Select a report from the Choose reports drop-down list.

4. Leave the proposed Friendly name.

   This is the text that will be displayed in the user interface to identify this report for this task.

5. Select an Output format. The drop-down list displays only formats that are compatible with the type of the report selected.
6. Use Quality to set the overall report quality.

7. Leave the Attach to email check box selected if you want to send this report as an email attachment.

   By default, Qlik NPrinting will attach all reports to the email message, including those with Attach to email disabled. To force Qlik NPrinting to attach only reports with the Attach to email check box selected, you must select Choose attachments in the Attachments drop-down list of the Email tab.

   You can disable attachments, for example, if you are adding an HTML report that will be embedded in the email body.

8. Leave the Enabled check box selected.

   If you clear the check box, the report will be added, but will be ignored by the scheduler.

9. Click Add report to confirm.

You can add as many reports as you want. You can also add the same report many times in different output formats or quality levels.

Adding users and groups

You can add as many users and groups to a task as you want. Output that is filtered for each recipient will be created. You have to create users or groups prior to performing this procedure. See: Creating users.

If you want to use a Qlik NPrinting user as a recipient of reports in Qlik Sense hub, you must connect it with a domain account to grant it access to the Qlik Sense apps. This is mandatory because Qlik Sense relies on the domain account to identify the user and Qlik NPrinting needs to impersonate the Qlik Sense user when opening the apps (apply security settings, section access, etc).

Do the following:

1. Click Users/groups in the main task menu.
2. Click Add user or group.
3. Select a user or a group from the Choose recipient drop-down list.

4. Leave the Enabled check box selected.

   If you clear the check box, the user or group will be added, but will be ignored by the scheduler.

5. Leave the NewsStand destination check box selected if you want to publish the report into the NewsStand profile of the selected user and group.
6. Select the Email destination check box to send the report via email to the selected user and group.
7. Click Add recipient.

Adding filters

You can add as many filters to your task as needed. All task output will be filtered using the task filters. This is in addition to report filters and user filters which are applied to specific reports or users.

You have to create filters before performing this procedure.

Do the following:

1. Click Filters in the main task menu.
2. Select one or more filters in the Available items column. You can use Shift or Ctrl for multiple selections.
3. Click the to move selected filters into the Selected items column.

4. Filter priority lets you to set the order in which Qlik NPrinting will apply filters.

   Note that applying the same filters in a different order could produce different results.

   To verify, open the .qvw with QlikView Desktop and apply the filters manually to test the result. Select the filter that you want to move and drag and drop it in its final position.

5. Click Add filters to store the filters.

Setting destinations

The Destinations tab lets you customize how reports will be delivered to each user or group. The page has at least two columns, NewsStand and Email, and a row for each user and group selected. Select or clear check boxes to enable or disable how reports are delivered to each user or group.

These are the available report destinations:

• NewsStand overview
• Distributing reports by email
• Distributing reports to folders
• Distributing reports to the Qlik Sense hub

Creating a distribution schedule

You can create triggers to schedule the automatic execution of publish tasks.

Do the following:

1. Click Triggers in the main task menu.
2. Click Create trigger.
3. Enter a Name.
4. In the Schedule section, select the Schedule type:
   • Once: The task will be executed once as specified by Time and Start Date.
   • Daily: The task will be executed every (n) days, or every weekday, at time specified in Daily frequency section:
     • Once: The task will be executed at the specified hour.
     • Multiple times: The task will be executed after the specified time, between the starting and finishing hours.
   • Weekly: The task will be executed on the specified days of the week.
   • Monthly: The task will be executed on the specified day of the month.
   • Yearly: The task will be executed on the specified day of the year.
5. In the Start section, you can set the Start date and Time zone of the hours specified in the trigger.
6. In the End section, you can set when to stop the task execution:

   • Event count: The schedule will be stopped after the specified number of executions.

     Information note

     Enabling, disabling, or changing the event count for a task does not reset the count of how many times the task was triggered. If you want to increase the number of times a task runs, you must increment the current number by the additional number of times you want the task to run.

   • End date and End time: The schedule will be stopped at the specified date and time.
7. Click Create to save the new trigger in the repository.

You can add as many triggers as you want to a task.

Running the publish task manually

You can publish your reports manually. This can be done in addition to publishing tasks that you have scheduled.

Do the following:

1. Click Overview in the task main menu.
2. Click Run now. A message indicates when the task is started.

Testing a publish task

You may want to test a publish task before you send reports to recipients. For example, you may want to ensure permissions are working.