BusinessObjects Board

Presenting a set of reports in a single PDF.

building reports desktopintelligence
#1

Hi,

We have a requirement to create a set of reports in which all measures are present in all those reports and only few dimensions are different.
We can consider them as different because they are developed seperatly and having different data providers.

We are thinking to present them in a single pdf document in different tabs within it. So a single pdf document can be distributed instead of sending each one seperatly.

Is this possible?

thanks
Sky

Sky :india: (BOB member since 2005-08-04)

Export some tabs from report in one pdf file
#2

There are some tools available to concatenate PDF files, like ‘PDF Append’, ‘PDF Split-Merge’. Just google to obtain them, search for ‘merge pdf’.

jobjoris :netherlands: (BOB member since 2004-06-30)

#3

But how to save all the documents into one, specially when we are scheduling?

Sky :india: (BOB member since 2005-08-04)

#4

Humm scheduling may be an issue. I remember having an application in java which used to merge different pdf files for us. So I suspect this may go beyond the scope of BO unless there is some utility available specifically for BO?? Just a comment lets see what others have on this.

salam :pakistan: (BOB member since 2005-01-27)

#5

I seem to recall doing this at one point. Like anything else, you may have to weigh the pros and cons of doing this, but…
I think you can set up your BusObj report with a different data provider (DP) for each tab. Each tab shows the results for each DP, thus, when you save (or publish as PDF in Broadcast Agent), each tab is represented in PDF separately.

I can’t help but think there’d be a more efficient way of doing this, but it escapes me right now. Maybe one of the more seasoned experts will have some input.

MSouders :us: (BOB member since 2005-10-05)

#6

Even the utilities to concatenate the reports can not be completly useful.

Probably some functinality in Business Objects should allow this, which is not currently in their, I believe.

Sky

Sky :india: (BOB member since 2005-08-04)

#7

Well, there was one commandline tool to merge pdf’s, when you need to merge pdf’s. Not sure what it’s name was though. Another negative aspect of these tools is the fact that the size of the pdf is growing enormously. When you would use Acrobat Writer it’s much more efficient when it comes to using up resources on your harddisk.

jobjoris :netherlands: (BOB member since 2004-06-30)

#8

I think in BO it is not possible to merge multiple PDFs. But you can do it manually with Adobe Acrobat Writer appending one after the other.

It would be tedious…

BO_Chief :us: (BOB member since 2004-06-06)