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  • 1.  Any new options to automate PAfE report bursting/automation

    Posted Thu July 31, 2025 03:49 PM

    There are some historic threads on this topic, and of course, the great product ReportWORQ.  

    But I'm wondering if anyone has had any recent success doing some simple PAfE report execution automation without ReportWORQ?  We're running on PA on the IBM Cloud with security mode 5.  VBA, Powershell, Python, anyone found success?

    What I'd like to do is open a report template, run it for a variety of parameter values, and save the output as PDF.  

    Again, I know ReportWORQ can do this with ease.  (ReportWORQ for Reporting Automation and Planning) Just don't have that option at this moment.

    Thanks in advance.

    Josh



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    Joshua Lobel
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  • 2.  RE: Any new options to automate PAfE report bursting/automation

    Posted Wed August 13, 2025 03:29 AM

    Hi Josh,

    You might have already seen it, but I posted something on this a while back - see post number 5 in this thread: https://community.ibm.com/community/user/discussion/burst-reporting-in-pafe#bma64f7417-994e-4868-bb2c-019662ed805f

    Not perfect, but it might point you in the right direction.

    Mark



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    Mark Hackett
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    Original Message


  • 3.  RE: Any new options to automate PAfE report bursting/automation

    Posted Wed August 13, 2025 04:28 AM

    I'm having some success with the share function for workbooks in Planning Analytics Workspace, the email and burst export functionality works but is tricky to get the output in the desired format and to exclude the front page with the book title. However, the export direct to PDF is much easier to control and whilst it is a little time consuming to run per iteration the client is happy that it just works and changes can be made without affecting any processes downstream

    I will raise an idea to suggest improvements to this functionality and I am also awaiting REST API access to Workspace which could potentially improve these types of processes as well



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    Edward Stuart
    Solutions Director
    Spitfire Analytics Limited
    Manchester
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    Original Message


  • 4.  RE: Any new options to automate PAfE report bursting/automation

    Posted Thu August 14, 2025 02:03 AM

    Hi Josh,

    We're doing just that with Python (we're on PA Local with security mode 5, main Python packages used are xlwings, redmail and markdown).
    We can send output as PDF (with optional PDF bookmarks) or Excel (with optional Table of Content).
    There were some challenges though...


    Best regards,
    Herman 



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    Herman Teeuwen
    Canon Production Printing
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    Original Message


  • 5.  RE: Any new options to automate PAfE report bursting/automation

    Posted Thu August 14, 2025 08:33 AM

    Thanks Herman,

     

    Did you use Python to run a refresh of the excel from Planning Analytics before exporting?  If so, through DBRW, or did you use tm1py and then update cells in the spreadsheet that way?

     

    Josh

     

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    Original Message


  • 6.  RE: Any new options to automate PAfE report bursting/automation

    Posted Thu August 14, 2025 08:47 AM
    Edited by Herman Teeuwen Thu August 14, 2025 08:47 AM

    Hi Josh,

    TM1Py is not involved here. We're opening PAfE and PAfE reports with Python/xlwings, set the parameters and refresh its DBRWs via PAfE API call.

    Herman



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    Herman Teeuwen
    Canon Production Printing
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    Original Message


  • 7.  RE: Any new options to automate PAfE report bursting/automation

    Posted Thu August 14, 2025 09:09 AM

    Just want to add:

    You could do similar things with VBA, but some things are just easier with Python (OS-related stuff, emailing etc.).

    There's however one thing that you cannot do in VBA:
    The "core" of our report bursting solution is logging. It serves not only for logging purposes but also as a means of checking that the report bursting is functioning correctly. When the report bursting program starts, a parallel Python process is launched to monitor if the log file is being updated. If the log file hasn't been updated for a certain period, we assume Excel must be "hanging." In such cases, this parallel process terminates Excel, sends a notification email to admins, and restarts itself.



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    Herman Teeuwen
    Canon Production Printing
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    Original Message


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