Broadcast Agent FAQ
Why does my add-in fail with ‘(20)Bad Macro Name’?
Error Code = 0x800706be, Error Message = ‘The remote procedure call failed’
Unknown running job killed. BCAG0230.
How can I use BCA to send my reports via email?
A report fails with the message ‘(306) LoginAs failed’
My report has prompts in it, how can I get BCA to decide which values to choose?
(303)…
All about orbdesktop.ini (working on)
Alternatives to BCA
Bob (BOB member since 2002-06-06)
I have developed an Add In to be run by BCA. When I schedule a report using this Add In it fails with the message ‘(20) Bad Macro Name’
The problem is that while the Add In is registered for you on your machine it is not registered for all users on the BCA machine. You probably see a message along the lines of ‘Make sure this Add In is registered on your BCA machine’ as you schedule the document. You might do what I did and open full client BO on the BCA machine and register the Add In. You still get the error. The reason is that when BCA runs jobs it isn’t signed on as you - so the add in needs to be registered for all users! This means a change to the system registry on the BCA machine. Please back up your registry before doing this:
Copy the add in file onto a directory on BCA, lets say C:\AddIn\newaddin.rea
Navigate to \HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\BUSINESS OBJECTS\BUSINESSOBJECTS\5.0\BUSOBJ GENERAL PREFERENCES\BUSOBJ\OPTIONS
If you don’t have a folder called ADDIN then right click on the Options folder and select New/Key naming the Key ADDIN.
Right click on the ADDIN folder and select New/Key naming it myaddin
Right click on myaddin and select New/String Value - enter ‘Description’
Right click and modify Description - enter ‘Description of my new addin’
Right click on myaddin and select New/String Value - enter ‘C:\AddIn\newaddin.rea’ - i.e. the full path of the addin on the server
Right click on myaddin and create a DWORD called ‘Installed’ with a value of 1
To check this has worked correctly you can signon to full client BO on the server as several different users - each should have the add in installed (Tools/Addin - newaddin.rea should be ticked)
Cindy Clayton 
(BOB member since 2002-06-11)
When I send a report to Broadcast Agent I see a message saying “Broadcast Agent is Offline, do you still want to schedule this report”
The most likely suggestion is that your BCA is recycling its processes. This takes a couple of minutes at most. The frequency with which this occurs is controlled by the Delay for auto shutdown parameter in the ‘Broadcast Agent Manager’ module of the BO Services Administrator application. If you have access to your BCA server you can verify if this is happening by looking for a process called BcsKick.exe which will be visible via task manager. Another way of verifying this is looking at the last entries in the .log file for the relevant BCA. This is stored in the \server\broadcast agent manager directory on the server. You will see some fairly obvious messages about the scheduler stopping and restarting. Ours takes 6 minutes consistently.
Another possibility is that for some reason, your BCA is not longer being monitored. If you look at the ‘Broadcast Agent Manager’ module via the BO Services Administrator, you may not see your BCA in the list or it may be turned off.
Generally you should answer yes to the question and then you may like to check out what BCA is doing, to see if you need to start monitoring BCA again or if it is just recycling.
Nick Daniels 
(BOB member since 2002-08-15)
Error Code = 0x800706be, Error Message = ‘The remote procedure call failed’
The full message you see in the BCA Console log is:
Error Code = 0x800706be, Error Message = 'The remote procedure call failed. ', WCode = 0x00000000, Description = '(null)'The reason this message occurs is that the Timeout for batch actions parameter in the BO Manager module was set too low. A report was still running when it exceeded the value for this parameter. So the solution is simple, even if the error message isn’t ( 
) - increase the value of the parameter to a value greater than the time it takes to refresh your report.
Nick Daniels (BOB member since 2002-08-15)
The following FAQ provided by David Alford:
How does BCA save files?
Save As without directory. By default BCA will save to …Program Files\Business Objects\BusinessObjects 5.0\UserDocs. When you save a file you have to use a fully qualified UNC (\servername\directorypath). The user that starts Business Objects on the server must have rights to write to the specified directory.
UNIX will default to saving in /WIData/UserDocs. At one time AIX could not save to any other directory. Not sure if that is fixed yet or not (we switched platforms from AIX to W2K)
Nick Daniels (BOB member since 2002-08-15)
Unknown running job killed. BCAG0230.
:arrow: Scheduler was shutdown by disconnecting it and reconnecting it in admin panel. If you interrupt a job that is running, delayed or failing you may receive a BCAG0220.
Nick Daniels (BOB member since 2002-08-15)
Error Code = 0x80010105, Error Message = 'The server threw an exception. ',Wcode = 0x00000000, Description = ‘(null)’.
Not sure but think this was from user submitting the job to BCA before we upgraded to 5.1. Once the user was upgraded and resubmitted the job, the error went away.
We had a case where a universe designer had gotten out of synch with what he had exported. He was running a job fine on his desktop this error when the job was submitted to BCA. Once he exported
the updated universe, BCA was happy again. Probably the strangest thing was the error was not immediate. It would take BCA an hour or more to decide it needed to error off. In trying to troubleshoot the report, we had watched the execution end on the Database and then watch virtually no activity on the BCA server.
[These two resolutions provided by David Alford - thanks 
]
Nick Daniels (BOB member since 2002-08-15)
How can I use BCA to send emails?
Check out Bob’s Downloads where we have a couple of free scripts that may help:
Email via CDO courtesy of Durgesh Das
Email via Lotus Notes courtesy of Matthew Mayhew
Nick Daniels (BOB member since 2002-08-15)
(306) LoginAs failed appears in the ‘Error’ column of the BCA console for a failed job.
The BusinessObjects user that scheduled the job has become disabled. Typically this occurs because the user has locked their account out, after forgetting their password. If you are unsure of the relevant user, add the ‘Owner’ column to your view. To fix the problem, simply renable the user via Supervisor.
Nick Daniels (BOB member since 2002-08-15)
I’ve got a report with prompts in it. How does BCA know what to do?
The most common solution to this, is the use of pre-defined conditions. Imagine a report which uses a prompt like this:
Date between <start date> and <end date>When you run the report on your PC, you fill in the start date as the first day of the current month and the end date as today. The logic you use to decide what dates to type is simple in this case and can be replicated in a pre-defined condition in the universe. Create a new pre-defined condition in the universe, we might call it ‘Month to Date’. In oracle, for example, the Where clause might look like:
Table.Date_column between trunc(sysdate,'mm') and trunc(sysdate)You then replace your prompt condition with this pre-defined condition and sent the report to BCA. The next time BCA runs the report, it will evaluate the sql in your pre-defined condition to decide what information should be retrieved. You can sit back and bask in the glory!
Thanks to HenkK for a nice variation for the more demanding user:
When we have a report with prompt for start date which is used by users as well as BCA we create double prompts like
<object> = Decode(@prompt("startdate or 0 for sysdate"), 0, Trunc(sysdate), @prompt("startdate or 0 for sysdate"))Users just fill in the date they want as appropriate when running directly on their own PC. If the report is to be sent to BCA you fill in 0 and the prompt will be automatically completed.
Steve Krandel has another take on this problem, which you can read about here. Thanks Steve.
Nick Daniels (BOB member since 2002-08-15)