Proficy Portal's printing features allow you to preview or print displays for reporting purposes. With Natural Printing, you can print displays or save reports with the use of URL line parameters. This allows you to set up report scheduling. For example, a display that provides an analysis of production down time can be set up to print or to be saved as a file at the end of each shift, allowing a supervisor to quickly assess the data from the previous shift.
To set up Natural Printing, you will need to customize a URL with specific parameters. The URL will access the Proficy Portal server, open the display to be printed, and perform one of the following tasks:
Print the display.
Save the display as a .pdf file to a local directory that you specify.
Save the display as a .pdf file to the server in a location that you specify.
A number of additional options are available when you create the URL. For example, you can specify parameters for the printer to use, report orientation, number of copies to print, and other options. For more information on creating URLs for Natural Printing, see URL Parameters for Printing.
After creating and testing the URL, you can then set up a schedule by creating an Internet shortcut to the URL, and creating a scheduled task. For more information, see Scheduling Printing and Image Generation.
For information on Proficy Portal's printing features and URL line parameters, refer to Printing Displays and Passing Parameters to URLs respectively.
You can generate a PDF report from any display during run time. The report is saved as a file either on the local user's machine or on the Proficy Portal server. After the file has been generated, it can be used to embed a PDF file into a Web Control object or into a display with a Weblink. For more information, refer to Generating PDF Reports in the Running Proficy Portal documentation.
