Delivery Rules

This feature is unavailable for Web Intelligence documents.

"Delivery rules" affect how documents in publications are processed and distributed. When you set delivery rules on documents, you indicate that the publication will be delivered to recipients only if the content in the documents meets certain conditions. There are two types of delivery rules:

·            Recipient delivery rule
If the data in the recipient's instance meets the delivery rule, the instance is delivered to the recipient.

·            Global delivery rule
If the data in a designated document meets the delivery rule, the publication is delivered to all recipients.

The designated document for a global delivery rule can be different from the document or documents used in a publication. For example, you can set a global delivery rule on a Desktop Intelligence document used as a dynamic recipient source instead of a Desktop Intelligence document in the publication.

If a publication has recipient and global delivery rules, the global delivery rule is evaluated first to determine whether the publication will be processed. If the publication meets the global delivery rule, the system then evaluates the recipient delivery rules to determine which instances to process and distribute for each recipient.

How you set delivery rules depends on the document type that you want to publish. For Crystal reports, you specify a delivery rule based on a named alert that the report designer creates in the Crystal report. For Desktop Intelligence documents, you specify a formula expression. You can also set a delivery rule based on whether the personalized publication contains any data.

The diagram “Global delivery rule met” illustrates how an alert-based global delivery rule works. Here the global delivery rule is set on a document in the publication. The Crystal report has a Revenue alert for values greater than 100,000. The publisher creates a global delivery rule based on the Revenue alert so that the Crystal report is only delivered to all recipients if revenue exceeds 100,000. In this case the delivery rule is met, so the Crystal report is delivered.

The diagram “Recipient delivery rule unmet” illustrates how a recipient delivery rule works. The publisher sets a recipient delivery rule for the Crystal report so that the report is delivered to recipients only if the report contains data for that recipient. When the report is personalized for each recipient, Green Recipient does not have data in the Crystal report. This means that only Blue Recipient and Orange Recipient receive the publication.

For publications that contain multiple documents and objects, each document can have its own recipient delivery rule. When you do this, you have the following options for processing and delivery:

·            If a document in the publication fails to meet its recipient delivery rule for a recipient, the entire publication will not be delivered for that recipient.

·            If a document in the publication fails to meet its recipient delivery rule for a recipient, that document will not be delivered, but all other documents in the publication will be delivered for that recipient.

Delivery rules are useful because they allow publications intended for a large number of recipients to be processed and distributed more efficiently.

Consider a situation in which a publisher at an insurance company creates a publication for its clients that contains the following objects:

·            An insurance bill (personalized Crystal report).

·            A monthly statement (personalized Crystal report).

·            A payment methods brochure (PDF).

In the insurance bill, there is an Amount Due alert for values greater than zero. The publisher creates an Amount Due recipient delivery rule for the insurance bill so that the insurance bill is published and distributed only if a client owes the insurance company a payment. The publisher also specifies that the entire publication will not publish if the insurance bill fails to meet the delivery rule because he does not want clients to receive a monthly statement and a brochure when they do not have to pay a bill. When the publication is run, the publication is processed and distributed to clients who owe payments only.

If a Crystal reports publication is scheduled to print when the publication runs, the print job occurs regardless of whether a document in a publication fails to meet a delivery rule and is not delivered to a recipient. This is because print jobs are processed during personalization, and delivery rules are applied to publications after personalization.