Overview

This SAS KB article includes some troubleshooting tips that an administrator should review if the distribution feature is not working as expected in SAS Visual Analytics Designer 7.5 and earlier.

This KB article focuses on the SAS Visual Analytics distribution feature. It assumes that you have correctly configured your SMTP mail server, which is a middle-tier administration task.

Note: For information about distributing in release 8.2 and later, see "Distributing Reports" in the usage documentation for your release of SAS Visual Analytics on SAS^® Viya^®.

This KB article contains the following main topics:

• Verify Configuration Settings in SAS^® Management Console
• Additional Tips for Users and Administrators
• Known Issues
• Documentation Resources

Verify Configuration Settings in SAS^® Management Console

To perform the following tasks and verify settings, log on to SAS Management Console with an administrative account such as sasadm@saswpw.

Tasks Performed with the User Manager Plug-In

You must manually perform these steps for your site.

• In order to receive distributions and send distributions, users must be registered in metadata with both a login and an email address. For each registered user, open the Properties dialog box, and enter the address on the General tab. The Type field can be any value. Typically, you would enter SMTP. Only one email address is supported for distribution. If a user has more than one email address in metadata, SAS Visual Analytics sends the report to only the first email address that it finds.

Note: You cannot distribute to an internal-only (@saspw) account, even if the account has a valid email address in metadata.

Note: In 7.4 and earlier, the Distribute Reports dialog box shows only those users who have an email address in metadata. In 7.5, all users who exist in metadata are listed and can be selected as recipients even though they do not receive the email. 

• In order to create distributions, users must have the Distribute Reports capability. Open the properties of each user who should have the ability to distribute. On the Members tab, verify that each user is in a role that includes the Distribute Reports capability, or add them to a role with the capability. By default, this capability is enabled for the Visual Analytics: Analysis role.

Tasks Performed with the Server Manager Plug-In

These settings should be configured during installation and deployment. However, if distribution is not working as expected, then verify that they are still correct.

• Ensure that a SAS Distributed In-Process Services Scheduling Server is defined, as shown in the following display.

• Beneath the SAS Application Server context that contains the workspace server used by SAS Visual Analytics, ensure that users who have the ability to distribute reports have ReadMetadata permission for the SAS Java Batch Server.
• Ensure that the SAS Java Batch Server (mentioned previously) contains a server of the sub-type Visual Analytics Scheduled Distribution, as shown in the following display.

Note: If you created a new application server context to use with SAS Visual Analytics, you must manually define the SAS Java Batch Server of the sub-type Visual Analytics Scheduled Distribution.

• If you have defined more than one SAS Application Server, ensure that users who have the ability to distribute reports have ReadMetadata permission for only one SAS Java Batch Server of the sub-type Visual Analytics Scheduled Distribution. If users do not have access to any Visual Analytics Scheduled Distribution server, or if users have access to more than one Visual Analytics Scheduled Distribution server, then the OK button in the New Report Job dialog box remains disabled.

Tasks Performed in the Application Management Category

These settings should be configured during installation and deployment. However, if distribution is not working as expected, then verify that they are still correct

• In the Advanced properties for the SchedulingService, ensure that the Enable.Distributed-IP.Scheduler property is set to true. To see this property, navigate to Configuration Manager ► SAS Application Infrastructure ► Web Infra Platform Services ► SchedulingService.

• Report jobs and distributions (job flows) are stored in user-specific folders beneath a folder that is referenced by the va.baseSchedulingFolder property. Verify that this Advanced property is set by navigating to Configuration Manager ► SAS Application Infrastructure ► Visual Analytics, as shown in the following display.

• Ensure that the Enable Distributed-IP Scheduler job runner option is selected on the Settings tab for the JobExecutionService. To see this option, navigate to Configuration Manager ► SAS Application Infrastructure ► Web Infra Platform Services ► JobExecutionService.

• Ensure that the SAS Application Server context that contains the workspace server used by SAS Visual Analytics is selected on the Settings tab for the JobExecutionService. To see this option, navigate to Application Management ► Configuration Manager ► SAS Application Infrastructure ► Web Infra Platform Services ► JobExecutionService. (See the previous image.)

Tasks Performed on the SAS Folders Tab

Locate the value of the va.baseSchedulingFolder property by navigating to Application Management ► Configuration Manager ► SAS Application Infrastructure ► Visual Analytics. The property is on the Advanced tab. When you have this value, perform the following tasks on the SAS Folders tab.

• Verify that the folder path exists. When a user creates a distribution, SAS Visual Analytics Designer creates a folder for that user in this location.

• Ensure that users who have the ability to distribute reports have the minimum permissions on the ScheduledDistribution folder and on their individual folders. The minimum permissions are ReadMetadata, WriteMetadata, and WriteMemberMetadata. For example, if users do not have the correct permissions, they might see errors such as "The report job was not created," "The base folder containing scheduled report distributions cannot be found," "Unable to save the metadata," and "The repository (Foundation) does not contain the (/) folder." The exact message depends on which permissions are denied.

Additional Tips for Users and Administrators

• Use only SAS^® Visual Analytics Designer to create and manage distributions. Do not use the Schedule Manager in SAS Management Console.
• If any of the recipient addresses are invalid, then SAS Visual Analytics stops attempting to distribute the report. If the recipient is the first user in the list, then no one receives the report.
• If the sender of the distribution does not have an email address in metadata or if the sender does not have an address at all, the distributions are not sent.
• The FROM address for the distribution email is the account specified for Sender of Messages in SAS Management Console. This setting is under Application Management ► Configuration Manager ► SAS Application Infrastructure ► Settings ► Notifications ► Administrative and Error Messages. This account is used for only the FROM address. It is not the account used to connect to the email server. 
• If you distribute a report that is saved in a My Folder location, recipients might not receive the email. If they do receive the email, they see a message that they do not have permission to read the report. Save the report in a shared location, and then create a new distribution.
• Reports are distributed as PDF attachments to email messages. Attachments are stripped if they exceed a known size limit. For more information about how these attachments are handled, see "About the Size of Email Attachments" in the SAS Visual Analytics: Administration Guide. (See Documentation resources.)
• Use the Notifications options in the Report Job dialog box to receive an email when the job begins and a completion summary email when the job ends. The completion summary can contain information about problems with the distribution.
• If you change a user's ID in your authentication system, then ensure that you update the user's Login information in SAS Management Console and restart the web application server where SAS Visual Analytics is deployed. Typically, that is SASServer12_1. If these steps are not taken, existing distributions fail for the modified users, and the Visual Analytics Hyperlink log contains the error: Application Visual Analytics Hyperlink Service 7.x does not allow public users.
• In the Distribute Report dialog box, you can view the history for each distribution. For example, if a report is deleted or moved before the time at which it is scheduled to be distributed, the Show History dialog box would contain a message such as "None of the reports specified in the report job was found."
• Check the status of the Cache Locator on port 41415 and the DIP JobRunner. Both must be UP in order for distribution to work. For information about checking server status, see "Checking the Status of Servers" in the SAS Intelligence Platform: Administration/System Administration Guide.
• Information about distribution execution is logged in the SASVisualAnalyticsHyperlink.log. This log is located in SAS-configuration-directory/Lev1/Web/Logs/SASServerx_y/.

Known Issues

• If you are logged on to SAS Visual Analytics with an ID that contains white spaces or other special characters such as $ and =, you might be unable to save a report distribution. For more information, see SAS Note 65868.
• If SASServer1_1 starts before SASServer12_1 (the SAS Visual Analytics web application server), then distributions might not be delivered even though the history shows that the job completed with a nonzero exit code and there are no other warnings or errors. For more information, see SAS Note 66471.
• If you delete a user from metadata, make sure that you also delete any distribution jobs that they created. When you distribute, SAS Visual Analytics attempts to retrieve a list of all existing jobs. If any of those jobs are owned by a user who no longer exists in metadata, then you might see an error. For more information, see SAS Note 56731.
• If your environment includes jobs and flows that were created in an application other than SAS Visual Analytics, you might not be able to distribute. For more information, see SAS Note 56731.
• If your environment includes jobs scheduled on the Platform Process Manager server, the Distribute Reports dialog box might take a long time to open, or fail to open at all. For more information, see SAS Note 62492.
• If recipients begin receiving more copies of a report than expected, then see SAS Note 63761.
• The Time event duration option is ignored in release 7.5. See SAS Note 64283.
• If recipients receive an email with the message PDF Failure (PRINT_REQUEST_FAILED), then see SAS Note 60424.

Documentation Resources

For links to all of the available documentation for SAS Visual Analytics, see the SAS Visual Analytics Product Documentation page. Here are the topics that are specific to distribution:

• "Distributing Reports" in the SAS Visual Analytics: User's Guide.
• "Supporting Report Distribution" in the SAS Visual Analytics: Administration Guide.

For a link to the SAS Intelligence Platform: Application Server Administration Guide, see the SAS^® Intelligence Platform page. For information about creating application servers, see the "Managing SAS Application Servers" topic.