Scheduled Reports Duplicating

[Former Member]

Hello,

We are using Central Manament Console to schedule reports to be sent to various e-mail recipients as attachments. This is a relatively new process for us (though we've been using CMC in general for a while) and I don't think we're doing it quite properly.

The reports seem to schedule/send fine for a while, but then for no reason we can determine, multiple copies of the reports get generated. When we look in the History Tab, we'll see two, three, four, or more Recurring instances.

Is there a setting we should be changing or something we need to look at to prevent this from happening? It's very troublesome.

[Former Member · Accepted solution]

Is this a clustered environment? If so, then it sounds like the cms's are out of synch. This can happen from the time not being synched, or from a slow a database. If it is a Windows system check the application event viewer to see if there are database errors coming from the cms. If so then you are losing cluster due to database slowness or loss of connectivity and if you can not resolve this with your Network and or Database Admins, you should log an incident with us.

Jadie

[Former Member · Accepted solution]

Is this a clustered environment? If so, then it sounds like the cms's are out of synch.

Sorry this took so long, but I needed to find someone who knew the answer. And the answer is, "We don't know." Or rather, we're not sure whether our setup meets the criteria for what you call a clustered enviornment.

The way we're set up now, we have one server that's 100% dedicated to our reporting traffic. We have a second server set up as a hot failover should the primary go down. But we don't have them doing any kind of load sharing; it's either one or the other.

[Former Member · Accepted solution]

Do they share the CMS database?

This is the only criterion used to consider (whether) two or more CMSs form a BO cluster.

Note that if the CMS' are clustered, load is automatically shared between servers.

Edited by: Srinivas Ganapathi on Oct 2, 2008 6:45 PM

[Former Member]

OK, we're still having this issue. Today, two different reports were duplicated.

Here's what I know - we do have what probably amounts to a BO cluster (based on the definition of "Do two different CMC servers share the same database"). Our fallback server has CMC running on it.

On Friday, we turned off CMC on that server (they did not shut down CMC entirely but stopped two server processes - I forget the specifics as to what they did, but they made the decision based on Crystal XI documentation).

On Saturday, one of the scheduled reports we have ran properly - that is to say, once. I was very happy to see that. However, after the two reports duplicated this morning, I went in and checked the one that worked OK on Saturday. It had two "Recurring" instances on the history tab - which tells me it probably would have duplicated again tomorrow (the next time it's set to go).

I see there is a "Limit" option on the history tab. What would happen if I set these reports to allow only one instance ever on that tab? (Or even 0?)

[Former Member]

Michael,

Without knowing other specifics of the problem you're facing, it is entirely possible that if the default settings of the report in the CMC are such that the report is set to recur say every day or every hour, when a user either schedules or reschedules the report from InfoView, and does not change the recurrence pattern, you end up with multiple recurring instances.

If you find this is the case, I would not set the report to recur by default from the CMC; I would set the report to run 'Once' by default, then set the recurring instance from InfoView - that way new schedules or reschedules don't get created...

Will

[Former Member]

Will,

There are only 5 people (including myself) who have access to CMC to change reports, and we remain in pretty close contact regarding any changes we made. I know for a fact, for instance, we set up a report with scheduling, and the next day there were two recurring instances.

Here are the settings for the report in question:

Under the "Schedule" tab, on the main screen, the report is set to Run Weekly, every day from Tuesday - Saturday at 8:30 AM EST. Start date is 09/19/2008 8:30 AM, end date 09/12/2018, 12:00 AM.

Under "Notification" we have it set to email on when a job has failed to run.

Under "Destination" we have E-mail (SMPT), and Clean up instance after scheduling is checked.

Under "Format" we have Microsoft Excel, and Use options saved with report is checked.

Under "Schedule For", it's set to Schedule only for myself.

At present, under History, there is one Recurring instance, dated 09/20/08 8:30:27 AM. There were four when I came in this morning, all with times very close to each other.

Though I must profess my relative newness to the world of Business Objects....what exactly is InfoView and how does it differ from CMC?

[Former Member]

InfoView - user portal for BusinessObjects - for users to access reports, dashboards etc... InfoView has limited functionality (for good reason) compared to the CMC and allows users to maninpulate the report objects you've configured through the CMC

CMC - Management Console/portal for BusinessObjects - for admins....

If you're running XI 3.0 and your URL is

http://<servername>/CmcApp,

go to http://<servername>/InfoViewApp

For XI R2 go to

http://<servername>/businessobjects/enterprise115/desktoplaunch/InfoView/logon/logon.do

Here's a simple question: what user created the other recurring instances? Are they the same user as the one who created your original recurring instance? If not, ask that user how they interacted with the system to create the other instances - where did they log etc...

[Former Member]

Our users don't interact with InfoView at all. They simply consume the results of these scheduled reports in their e-mail. All setup and configuration of the reports is done by my team.

And the issue is, no one created the other recurring instances - that's my whole problem. We had it set up on Friday night, and there was only one recurring object in the "History" tab of CMC. No one from my team did anything to change it, and on Saturday morning two e-mails were sent. When I looked at it on Monday there were 4 recurring instances.No human did anything.