Automate reprint posting report to PDF?

I am interested in the script.  I have to go in every morning and reprint all of the batches from the previous day(s) to forward to fiscal. 

Trudy Guest, System Administrator

385-468-1028

From: Tessitura Technical Forum [mailto:forums-technical@tessituranetwork.com] On Behalf Of Nick Reilingh
Sent: Thursday, September 10, 2015 1:02 AM
To: Trudy Guest
Subject: Re: [Tessitura Technical Forum] Automate reprint posting report to PDF?

Hi Sarah,

I actually ended up writing a utility and stored procedure that does this. It's effectively a Reprint Posting Report Batch Print-to-PDF utility. For my needs, it prints ranges of consecutive posting numbers, but the concept could be repurposed to nonconsecutive sets of postings as well. The outcome is that my biweekly procedure of running reprint posting report and saving to PDF fifteen times in a row is reduced to the following (presuming everything is already posted):

- Set the parameters for my batch utility according to my desired range of posting numbers, and the summary or detail mode I want for the report output--then set it running in a "new window" mode.

- After the utility has finished running (about 15 minutes in my case), I go collect my PDFs from the network share identified by the FILESAVE REPORT PATH T_DEFAULTS setting.

- Bonus: I use the actual output from the utility in conjunction with a batch file rename application to rename the saved PDFs according to their posting date.

So all in all, it turns a few hundred repetitive keystrokes into two or three distinct actions. The scary stuff in the middle is where the utility, while it is running, actively schedules reports for running on the report server in "File-PDF" mode, then monitors them as the report server processes them, and then cleans up after itself when it's done. If the Report Server was more reliable, this could all be done in 30 seconds instead of 15 minutes, but the only way to be reasonably sure that you get the report output you want (due to the report server just being completely weird and nonsensical) is by limiting the report server to one concurrent job -- meaning if your polling rate is every 60 seconds, it will take a full minute to run each reprint posting report in the batch. And I still make sure to give the PDFs a once-over to make sure a report didn't get duplicated or something. In terms of speed, the manual repetitive keystrokes are actually much faster from start to finish (for me, at least), but when I have the utility do it for me I can multitask or get a cup of coffee or whatever.

So that's it! I met someone at TLCC who also had a similar situation of needing to do batch prints of posting reports, but I'm not yet sure if the appeal for this is broad enough that I should publish it on the code share. If it turns out a lot of people would use the consecutive posting numbers option, I could actually upload it to the code share as-is, but if most people would just be changing it to do something different for their organization, I'd probably opt instead to just put the code on my profile for other people to play with.

I am interested in the script.  I have to go in every morning and reprint all of the batches from the previous day(s) to forward to fiscal. 

Trudy Guest, System Administrator

385-468-1028

From: Tessitura Technical Forum [mailto:forums-technical@tessituranetwork.com] On Behalf Of Nick Reilingh
Sent: Thursday, September 10, 2015 1:02 AM
To: Trudy Guest
Subject: Re: [Tessitura Technical Forum] Automate reprint posting report to PDF?

Hi Sarah,

I actually ended up writing a utility and stored procedure that does this. It's effectively a Reprint Posting Report Batch Print-to-PDF utility. For my needs, it prints ranges of consecutive posting numbers, but the concept could be repurposed to nonconsecutive sets of postings as well. The outcome is that my biweekly procedure of running reprint posting report and saving to PDF fifteen times in a row is reduced to the following (presuming everything is already posted):

- Set the parameters for my batch utility according to my desired range of posting numbers, and the summary or detail mode I want for the report output--then set it running in a "new window" mode.

- After the utility has finished running (about 15 minutes in my case), I go collect my PDFs from the network share identified by the FILESAVE REPORT PATH T_DEFAULTS setting.

- Bonus: I use the actual output from the utility in conjunction with a batch file rename application to rename the saved PDFs according to their posting date.

So all in all, it turns a few hundred repetitive keystrokes into two or three distinct actions. The scary stuff in the middle is where the utility, while it is running, actively schedules reports for running on the report server in "File-PDF" mode, then monitors them as the report server processes them, and then cleans up after itself when it's done. If the Report Server was more reliable, this could all be done in 30 seconds instead of 15 minutes, but the only way to be reasonably sure that you get the report output you want (due to the report server just being completely weird and nonsensical) is by limiting the report server to one concurrent job -- meaning if your polling rate is every 60 seconds, it will take a full minute to run each reprint posting report in the batch. And I still make sure to give the PDFs a once-over to make sure a report didn't get duplicated or something. In terms of speed, the manual repetitive keystrokes are actually much faster from start to finish (for me, at least), but when I have the utility do it for me I can multitask or get a cup of coffee or whatever.

So that's it! I met someone at TLCC who also had a similar situation of needing to do batch prints of posting reports, but I'm not yet sure if the appeal for this is broad enough that I should publish it on the code share. If it turns out a lot of people would use the consecutive posting numbers option, I could actually upload it to the code share as-is, but if most people would just be changing it to do something different for their organization, I'd probably opt instead to just put the code on my profile for other people to play with.