Facts 7.7 and using Cron to Email Reports

We recently upgraded a customer from version 7.4 to version 7.7 and in their old version we had created numerous cron jobs to email various reports to their sales staff, upper management, controller, etc. These reports were configured to run on various days of the week and at different times of day. All of this was working fine and they were very happy.

However, fast forward to after the upgrade and NONE of the reports that are emailed are working. The cron process certainly executes; the "temp" files of email are being created but the emails are not being sent. So, needless to say the customer is not happy at all.

Question: Has anyone using version 7.7 got cron sending emailed reports?

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Comments

hpocius

You did not state what your cron job is doing.
I have a ticket open with Infor regarding running JobStream from Cron.
The Cron starts and executes properly, but the JobStream does not complete properly.
I am not sure if this is your issue or not.
As a work around, for the Report Writer Reports, we did write a program to run Report Writer Jobs and skip the JobStream Process.

salbritton

I have successfully set up cron jobs start a FACTS/ProvideX session and send emails with attachments using the MailCall utility within UnForm at FACTS 7.7 on SCO Unix. Feel free to contact me offline if you'd like to discuss details.

Brad Kraft
Forsythe Associates
913-631-1221, ext 201

Legacy Contributor

What (incremental) version of FACTS are you running? Are you using Report Formatter reports?

Eddy Vittini

Thanks for the responses, to answer the questions posed:

Todd: Incremental 7.7.4, NOT report formatter reports (in 7.4.x email did not support report formatter reports, so we converted any report formatter reports to basic reports)

Marty: cron is executing by all that we can see, there is a "text" file being created in the "EMail Temp" directory in the EM static control, but it appears that the report is not being emailed. I have setup other "cron" jobs to print reports to printers and a file on the disk and the cron process completed and sent the reports to the disk and printer correctly. These are NOT report writer reports but "standard" Facts reports.

Brad: Thanks, but as I indicated in 7.4 email used to "print" these reports and send the text files to the recipients. I also have created a process to do a similar project (they were custom SA report layouts) but I am trying to replicate what they had in 7.4 with reports like aging; sales activity; and check recaps.

hpocius

cron is executing by all that we can see, there is a "text" file being created in the "EMail Temp" directory in the EM static control, but it appears that the report is not being emailed. I have setup other "cron" jobs to print reports to printers and a file on the disk and the cron process completed and sent the reports to the disk and printer correctly. These are NOT report writer reports but "standard" Facts reports.
Where is the emailing process supposed to be executed from?
Can you run the routine in FACTS, without Cron?

Eddy Vittini

Marty: The customer has the Email module (EM) from E&A and that module allows the "printing" to an email printer (PE). If I log in as the user (CRO) that Cron7 is supposed to use and run the job stream cron should execute the job runs and sends out the required number of emails to the recipients.

salbritton

Bob: I recently inquired to Infor support about a similar situation, where I wanted to verify whether the old 'cron7' script would work. I got the following response. Just wondering if you have the '&' included in your cron job:

Be aware that there was a defect reported for cron7 in 7.7 but it was fixed on the 7.7.4 incremental. Following are the notes pertaining to that defect and I've atttached the zip file just in case you need it:

Error #99: Feature not supported - running Cron7 Defect# 292790

Download the zip file containing SMS100, SMR999 and JSU111. You must have the 7.7.3 incremental update installed BEFORE installing these programs. The 7.7.4 incremental update will include these programs.

Before trying to run Cron7, look at FACTS7.cron in the FACTS home directory. If there are any lines below the line that reads, exec ${PVXDIR}/pvx ${RUNPROG} - DELETE them!

On AIX 5.3 the nohup command should be used in crontab as well as when running Cron7 from a unix prompt for testing. For example, cd to the FACTS home directory and issue the following command:

# nohup ./Cron7 &

This script MUST be run in background since there is no longer a CUI interface! That is what the & does. Failure to run in background will result in an error 40 in _picture and drop you to a 3> prompt.

Eddy Vittini

Brad: Thanks for that information, but I had already checked the FACTS7.cron file and remarked all the "bad" lines. FWIW - Infor indicates that incremental 7.7.4 fixed that issue, and I am at 7.7.4 and my FACTS7.cron script file still had the problem. Also, the & is only required for AIX, on SCO Unix and Linux that is not needed for cron.

To all following this thread...

The problem turned out to be a bug in EMC110 (protected) that caused SMC090 to be called with an error 40. The file pvx/lib/_web/runbg_error.log was being updated, but I did not realize this. It was detailing the "Error 40 occurred at line 1112 in program EMC110..." over and over and over again.

Thanks for all the assistance and pointers...

Bob Fitzgibbon
Proven Data Solutions, Inc.

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