Oracle EBS R12.1.3 Submit Request Delivery Options Button – Email– 3 of 6

Posted on August 19, 2010 by Brent Lowe

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This is the 3rd post in series on new features in 12.1.3. See the entire series here:

Part 1 – Introduction
Part 2 – IPP Print Tab
Part 3 – Email Tab
Part 4 – Fax Tab
Part 5 – FTP Tab
Part 6 – Conclusion
Part 7 – The Presentation
Part 8 – Removing the Button

Let’s take a look at the Email tab next.

This tab allows for the delivery of the report in question via email. Users are able to specify:

• From – The sender of the email. By default this field is populated with the email address specified for a user in the fnd_user table. This default can be overwritten by the user.

• Subject – The subject for the email. By default this field is populated with the string “Instance Name : Concurrent Program Name : Username” where
  Instance Name is pulled from the query: select instance_name from v$instance
  Concurrent Program Name is the program that is being run
  Username is the user name running the report.
  This value can be overwritten by the user.

• To – Email address of the recipient. Multiple addresses can be specified by separating them with a comma.

• CC – Email address for the carbon copy recipient. Multiple addresses can be specified by separating them with a comma.

Configuration
The Email tab utilizes SMTP to communicate to a mail host that in turns sends the email to the recipients. The hostname and port of the mail host is configured via the profile values:

FND: SMTP Host
FND: SMTP Port

Based on the package fnd_delivery, it appears that SMTP username and password should be able to be set, however it is currently unknown if this is fully implemented. It does not appear that these functions are invoked.

Functionality
For each recipient row (To/CC), a new email is sent to the defined recipients. The behavior of the delivered email is as following:

1. If the report being delivered is TEXT based, then the email message body contains the report contents.
2. If the report being delivered is NON-TEXT, then the email message body is blank and attachment containing the report contents is delivered. The attachment name is derived from the Concurrent Program Short Name and Request ID. For example:

POXPRPOP_12345676_1.PDF

It is important to note that there is NO bursting functionality associated with this form. What you define for your concurrent request parameters to generate output is what is going to be sent to the end recipients.

Pros and Cons
Overall this appears to be some great new functionality, the immediate/obvious pro that I see is that the ability to send reports as email is now available. Additionally, the ability to specify a from email address allows the sender to receive any bounce backs that may happen based on a botched email address.

Some issues that I see with this new functionality are:

1. Format of the email – depending on the report output type, the email will be delivered with the report as an attachment or as part of the email message body. In most cases I would think that the message body should be somewhat configurable, i.e. a way to say “Hello xyz, here is the report that I promised you” or at the very least have some hardcoded information about the sender and contents of the email.

2. Attachment names. The names of the attachments that get delivered with the email are not the most user friendly as it is derived from internal Oracle information (Request ID, Program Name).

3. User experience/process. Because the ‘Upon Completion’ form where a user would typically specify a printer is still in play, a user must ensure that if they only want to email the report that the printer is set to ‘noprint’ or something similar. For example, if I want to email the ‘Active Users’ report to my System Administrator, I have to do the following.
a. Submit a New Request, choose the ‘Active Users’ report.
b. Pop the Delivery Options form and fill in the appropriate email parameters.
c. Pop the Upon Completion form and change the printer/style combination such that the report is not actually printed out.
d. Hit submit to process the request.

Overall, likely not a huge issue, but (c) is just another step a user has to take to prevent errant print-outs of data when they really just want to email the report.

Next up…. the Fax tab. Additionally, would love to have your feedback regarding your thoughts about the functionality.

For more information:

• 5 Commonly Asked Questions about BI Publisher in Oracle EBS R12
• How to Email from Oracle EBS R12
• 7 Best Practices Implementing BI Publisher with EBS R12
• BI Publisher University: A Collection of Free Resources To Help You Master BI Publisher (BIP)

 

 

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14 Responses to Oracle EBS R12.1.3 Submit Request Delivery Options Button – Email– 3 of 6

1. James Chan says:

   June 9, 2011 at 4:29 am

   Hi,

   This function is really easy to use. Is there any API like FND_SUBMIT to use in PL/SQL, I’d like to write some programs to submit reports and send email to users automatically.

   Thank you!

   BR,
   James

   Reply
2. tess ignacio says:

   July 27, 2011 at 4:22 pm

   This functionality does not apply where the concurrent request is in pdf format, correct?

   Reply
   • Brent Lowe says:

     July 28, 2011 at 8:29 am

     Hi Tess,

     Yes this functionality DOES apply when the concurrent request output is PDF. Using this form you can deliver anything that gets run through the concurrent manager. Keep in mind there are some functional limitations. For example, when you send a PDF, you do not get any message body and the name of the PDF comes through as _. For example: POXPRPOP_123456.PDF. So that may be a bit confusing to the recipient. For more information on this and other delivery options, I’m doing a webinar on this functionality next week, you can register here: https://www1.gotomeeting.com/register/436632369

     Reply
3. tess ignacio says:

   July 28, 2011 at 9:02 am

   Thanks Brent for your reply.

   I want to add that the email has the attachment but in xls format and is not readable.

   Thanks,
   Tess

   Reply
   • Brent Lowe says:

     July 28, 2011 at 10:17 am

     Could you send me the email with the attachment, I’d like to take a look: brent dot lowe at strsoftware dot com

     Reply
4. Sachin says:

   November 16, 2011 at 4:25 pm

   1. If the report being delivered is TEXT based, then the email message body contains the report contents.

   All is working fine but the TEXT output is coming in email as attachment, I need that as email Body. Do I need to configure something to achieve this?

   Regards
   Sachin

   Reply
   • Brent Lowe says:

     November 22, 2011 at 2:19 pm

     Hi Sachin,

     Need some more information. What type of concurrent program are you running? i.e. what’s doing the actual formatting? An Oracle Report, BIP, PL/SQL?

     Reply
5. alan says:

   November 17, 2011 at 6:07 am

   Hi,
   It is really easy to configure and useful. Especially, the output is in PDF. Before configured, I encountered the bug– “REP-0004: Warning: Unable to open user preference file in default apps.” Please look at this article on metalink [ID 1303903.1] for the solution.

   Best Regards
   alan

   Reply
   • Brent Lowe says:

     November 22, 2011 at 2:21 pm

     Thanks for sharing!

     Reply

6. Pingback: Oracle EBS R12.1.3 Submit Request Delivery Options Button – Intro – 1 of 6 | STR Software

7. Anand says:

   February 29, 2012 at 9:59 am

   Hi Brent,

   Iam exploring the delivery options tab of the concurrent request, but it seems that email address has to be manually entered in the box provided before submitting the program

   Do we have any method by which we can populate the information on the fields

   Thanks
   Anand

   Reply
   • Brent Lowe says:

     March 6, 2012 at 10:20 am

     Hi Anand,

     Unfortunately you are correct in your findings. The email address must be manually entered in the field before submitting the program. There is no logic to populate that information with say Vendor or Customer contact information based on the document you are submitting. In order to achieve that functionality you will need to look outside Oracle’s standard functionality to 3rd party products. Naturally, I can help with that. Let me know if you are interested to learn more.

     Thanks for reading!

     Reply
8. Tim says:

   March 11, 2013 at 10:08 pm

   Hi Brent,

   I have submitted the report with delivery option to email but this doesn’t work for me. Do I need to setup something before this function works?

   I am getting the error message below.
   Beginning post-processing of request 4013205 on node VUXXXXXXXXXXXX5 at 12-MAR-2013 15:34:25.
   Post-processing of request 4013205 failed at 12-MAR-2013 15:34:25 with the error message:
   One or more post-processing actions failed. Consult the OPP service log for details.

   Regards,
   Tim

   Reply
   • Brent Lowe says:

     April 9, 2013 at 5:09 pm

     Hi Tim, sorry for the late response. The only configuration that needs to be done is to ensure you set the profile variables:

     FND: SMTP Host
     FND: SMTP Port

     to the appropriate values for your environment. With that being said, the OPP log is the best place to look for the specific error that is being thrown. It could really be anything at this point and may not be related to delivery at all. I would recommend takeing a look at the error in the OPP log and going from there.

     Hope this helps!

     Reply