OBIEE Bursting - Dynamic Output Name

JessicaWilson

I have a set of data that includes Customers and Invoices (not really, but for simplicity sake, let's call it this).  I have my bursting set to Deliver by Customer and Split by Invoice and the desire is that once a day, I run this data to send out the invoices.

This seems to work as desired in that I get 1 file per invoice delivered to the customer.  The part that isn't feasible is that every file and e-mail look the exact same - customer has to open each one to determine what data is contained in the report.  I really need the invoice number on the subject line and in the file output name.

So...reading up on this it seems it isn't possible via bursting directly.

If I put a parameter on my report for invoice, I can use that bind variable in the subject and output file name.

What I'm looking for now is a way to 1) Determine what invoices need to be sent (easy enough to do with PL/SQL) and 2) use that info to somehow call my report with the invoice parameter so that the subject line and output file name have the information I need.  Does anybody out there have any clever work-arounds for this deficiency to the bursting mechanism?

Thanks in advance,

Jessica

JessicaWilson

Here's the solution I ended up with.  Documenting in case it can help anyone else.

I changed my BI data model to accept invoice as a parameter and then I appended that invoice parameter to the output_filename and the mail subject line.  I created a process in ODI to loop through the data table to identify invoices that needed to be sent.  I then used an ODIInvokeWebService process to schedule the BI report for each invoice individually through the web service API.  Maybe not the most elegant solution and there should have been an easier way to do this from BI itself.

Jessica