Chapter 14. Report distribution 317
Another benefit to using ODF is that you can select and combine documents from different 
reports and organize them by defining their order and separating them by using banner 
pages.
Figure 14-2 is an overview of the OnDemand Distribution Facility and its interaction with the 
Content Manager OnDemand server. 
Figure 14-2   Content Manager OnDemand Distribution Facility overview
Figure 14-2 shows that the Content Manager OnDemand server and its operation did not 
change. Reports and documents are loaded into the server, and system users continue to 
view and print their documents normally. The only addition to the library server is a set of ODF 
tables that define the documents that are to be distributed to which users and when. The ODF 
process reads the ODF tables and collects the required documents and bundles them for 
each recipient. ODF then send out the “bundles” to the appropriate destinations (email, file, 
and print). Alternatively, ODF can send each recipient (based on system definitions) an email 
notification that the report and document were loaded and are available for viewing.
Different organizations have different report and document load and retrieval patterns. In 
certain cases, documents are loaded and never retrieved. In other cases, a loaded document 
is retrieved multiple times by multiple users. In other cases, it is known that when a specific 
report or document is loaded, one or more copies must be distributed to one or more 
destinations. What benefit does automating this distribution process provide? 
The biggest benefit is that as reports are loaded into Content Manager OnDemand regularly, 
they can be delivered automatically to one or more users as they are loaded. Also, after the 
distribution is set up, no other changes are required, such as changing the document 
selection criteria to identify the latest data that is loaded. 
For example, suppose that your organization generates monthly statements for your 
customers. Y ou must store these documents in Content Manager OnDemand, and you must 
print the statements and mail them to the customers. With ODF , you can set up a distribution 
that automatically retrieves these documents as they are loaded into Content Manager 
OnDemand and sends them to a spool file for printing.