Auto-Refresh Multiple Workbooks

Question

Hey all!
We have a Sales Reporting team that has been using BPC to create reports for Sales Managers.  For the most part, everything works great.  However, during the first week of the month, our Sales Reporting team needs to open up each individual Sales Manager's report, click "Refresh Workbook", save the report and send it to the sales managers.  We have over 400 Sales Managers, so as you might imagine, this is very time consuming.
I've been asked if there is anyway that we can automate this process.  I've been butting my head against a wall for a couple of weeks now, but every idea I come up with seems lead to a dead end.  Has anyone else tried to do anything like this?  Any ideas would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks!
Sean

Answer 1

Don't look at distributing books. This is mainly for distributing published books which are one or more PDF reports with a TOC, (as you already discovered).
It seems the Distribution and collection feature of the product is hardly known or used.
I have always found this to be a fantastic feature, (though it can be a little quirky until you get use to it).
I have pasted the basic info from the documentation below; this should give you at least the basics for starting, (the online help has all the information).
Please let me know if you have any further questions and let us know how it works out for you.
Fletch
About distributing and collecting offline data
OutlookSoft's offline distribution and collection feature allows administrators to distribute reports and input schedules to multiple recipients, based on a predefined distribution list. The reports are saved to be used offline from the server in native Excel.
The mechanism to distribute offline reports is similar to publishing a book of reports, but this feature also allows you to distribute and collect input schedules. Other differences between publishing a book and distributing and collecting reports and input schedules are:
u2022     Reports or input schedules are locked (parked)
u2022     You can collect changes to offline input schedules and send the data to a database
u2022     Reports and input schedules are distributed through email or a designated network folder, not with a TOC on OutlookSoft Web
Distributing offline reports involves at least three steps, with an optional fourth step to collect modified input schedules:
u2022 Step 1: Create a report or input schedule template that defines the layout of the report. See
Creating reports or Creating input schedules, respectively.
For input schedules, you should set the input cells to 'unprotected' and protect the workbook. See Setting workbook options: Setting the OutlookSoft workbook password.
Also, the workbook should not contain any data. This is because the input schedule expands upon distribution, and clears all input cells.
u2022 Step 2: Create a distribution list that defines the scope (current view) of the data for one or more users. See Creating distribution lists.
u2022 Step 3: Use the Distribution Wizard to distribute offline reports or input schedules through email or a network folder. Reports are created for each user and for each current view described by the distribution report. See Distributing reports and input schedules.
u2022 Step 4: (Optional) If you distributed input schedules, the users can input data offline, and then email the reports back to you or save them in a designated directory. You can then use the Distribution Wizard to collect the data from the modified reports and send it to the database.
See Collecting input schedules.