Technical Blog Post
Abstract
BiLog: Reducing complexity in alarm clocks...and in Direct Duplex Printing
Body
My relationship with my alarm clock is complex. Like my love-hate relationship with our office printer, I have implemented a system to smooth the abruptness of our interactions. The actual time on the alarm is set to a time that I would like to see when I wake up – not the actual time. This false alarm clock time has been derived over years and years of wake ups, and is not a simple value of 1 or 2 hours ahead. However, when its loud alarm this morning caused me to go thru the multiple mathematical calculations to derive the actual time…I started questioning…isn’t there any easier way?
There is an easier way for you to direct print your reports in Maximo 7.5.0.3. Direct print enables your users to print reports via an icon from the application's toolbar. By utilizing a new property setting, mxe.report.birt.PrintSeparateRecord, you can enable duplex printing with record separation when direct printing a report.
Duplex printing with record separation enables you to print on both the front and back of a sheet of paper, and have each new record display on the front of a new piece of paper - so each job can be distributed to different individuals/jobs. This is shown in the diagram below with the three different records - with varying page lengths.
To enable this functionality prior to Maximo 7.5.0.3, you either had to add a single attachment to your record set or always include a dummy record set with an attachment as noted here. While these work arounds enabled the functionality to work properly, they involve extra steps that are cumbersome for the user to perform and remember.Now in Maximo 7.5.0.3, by simply setting mxe.report.birt.PrintSeparateRecord to true, when you direct print a report, each record will automatically start on a new piece of paper, while utilizing both sides of the paper. No extra attachments have to be made.
To find a full listing of report property settings, including a downloadable pdf file, for the Maximo 7.5.0.3 release and earlier versions, click here.
These property settings are also reviewed in more detail in the Version 7.5 Report feature guide for a full listing of report property settings here
Finally, be sure to check out the Maximo Report wiki pages here where more and more details on Maximo reporting are continuously being added. If you have functionality you would like to see detailed, please drop me a comment here or at my email of pdenny@us.ibm.com. Thank you!
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ibm11134195