Introduction to the Address Book
This topic introduces you to the Address Book and provides some suggestions for implementing it at your site.
RDM, one of Cypress's primary software modules, provides powerful and intuitive report addressing and delivery capabilities. With RDM, you can explicitly define a device to receive a subreport or use functions that allow Cypress to dynamically identify a destination device based on report file content. Additionally, you can use the Cypress Address Book facility to further automate and simplify subreport addressing and delivery. The Address Book offers new ways to control document and subreport delivery for both end users and Cypress administrators when implementing RDM.
Overview
The Cypress Address Book is one of the secondary user interfaces Cypress provides to enable you to manage your Cypress-controlled environment. It is a centralized repository containing names of recipients and their associated information (e.g., work locations, output devices, electronic inboxes, and custom selection attributes). The Address Book enables Cypress to automatically deliver documents and subreports to the appropriate destination based on information about a recipient.
Recipients in the Address Book
The Address Book is centered on recipients. A recipient is a user who can receive documents and reports. The recipient can be any of these entities:
| • | A specific user, such as “Judah Benton” |
| • | An abstract user, such as “Cypress Administrator” |
| • | A group of users, such as “Dept. 1110 Managers” |
The Address Book is composed of a unique definition for each recipient that identifies all the possible locations where a recipient can receive documents and reports, plus all destination devices at each location. Additionally, a recipient definition can contain personalized information that is to be printed on banner pages as well as user-defined attributes that can be used to identify a recipient or location.
The Address Book enables end users to print directly to a recipient from any Windows application, exactly as they would print to a physical device. Recipients are defined within the Address Book and are selected by end users from the Cypress Capture Driver print dialog within a Windows application. Optionally, end users can also indicate the location and type of destination. Printing to recipients allows end users to send a document to the desired person, but without having to know any device or address information.
In addition, end users can use the Address Book indirectly from within an Inbox Viewer. Assuming appropriate permissions, users can add new Inboxes, rename Inboxes, delete existing Inboxes, and change the priority assigned to each Inbox. These actions actually update the contents of the Address Book. End users also can subscribe to reports from within the Inbox Viewer, allowing them to select the content they wish to receive the instant it is created. This action modifies the Address Book by setting an attribute and value for the recipient subscribing to the report.
Using the Address Book with RDM
RDM uses the contents of the Address Book to identify a destination (i.e., a recipient address) for subreport delivery. Based on the information provided to RDM about the intended recipient and the number of recipient addresses defined, RDM can resolve which of the recipient’s addresses to use.
When Recipients are Identified by Name
When creating a subreport definition within RDM, you can specifically identify all recipients you want to receive the resulting subreport by selecting their names directly from a list of defined recipients. Because each recipient can have multiple recipient addresses at multiple locations, you can also identify a location and a destination type for each recipient.
| • | Destination type limits the possible recipient addresses to those that match the specified type (e.g., printer or inbox). |
If RDM cannot identify a single, unambiguous recipient address, it chooses the recipient address with the highest priority. For example, if a recipient has four unique recipient addresses (three printers and an Inbox) and you do not define any location or destination type requirements, RDM chooses the recipient address with the highest priority value. If multiple addresses share the highest priority value, the recipient address is determined alphabetically.
When using Auto Recipient
When creating a subreport definition within RDM, you can choose the Auto Recipient option to distribute subreports rather than explicitly specifying the names of all recipients. Your expressions can include any combination of destination type, recipient selection, and/or location selection criteria that reference attribute names and attribute values defined within the Address Book. Specifically, you can create expressions that include these criteria:
| • | Destination Type criteria that limit the possible recipient addresses to those that match the specified type (e.g., a printer). |
| • | Recipient Selection criteria that limit the possible recipients to receive the subreport. You can create an expression that references an attribute defined for the desired recipient (e.g., “organization = Development” or “employee number = 325698”). Note that most attributes are specific to a location. You can, however, reference an attribute at any location for purposes of recipient selection. You can then add Location Selection criteria to limit the possible recipient addresses. |
| • | Location Selection criteria that limit the possible recipient addresses to those listed on the corresponding Location tab (or Inbox tab) within the Address Book. |
If RDM cannot identify a single, unambiguous recipient address, it chooses the recipient address with the highest priority. For example, if RDM was able to resolve the location of the recipient address, but not destination type, the highest-priority device at this location is selected for subreport delivery. If multiple devices share the highest-priority value, the recipient address is determined alphabetically.