318 IBM Content Manager OnDemand Guide
Another example is a sales team that generates a monthly sales report for each person on 
the sales team. The sales manager needs a copy of these reports. A distribution can be set 
up to email the documents to the appropriate sales manager.
The applications for using ODF are endless, but the basis for using it is the same. Documents 
are loaded regularly and are needed by one or more users as they become available in 
Content Manager OnDemand. Let us look at a specific example from our fictitious company 
that was introduced in 1.2.1, “Background information of an example company” on page 6.
AFinancial Co generates monthly credit card statements for all its customers. These 
customers can choose to receive a hardcopy of the statement or have the statement sent to 
them as an email attachment.
In this example, even though separate customer statements are created each month, they are 
loaded into the system at the same time, so only one load occurs each month. This 
information is important when you are determining the best way to set up the distribution. 
Before a distribution is set up, ask yourself the following questions:
/SM590000What documents are needed?
/SM590000Who receives the documents?
/SM590000When are the documents retrieved and delivered?
/SM590000Where are they delivered?
14.1.1  What documents are needed
In our example, we identified our documents as the customer statements. How do you identify 
the customer report that you need from the hundreds of thousands of documents that are 
stored in Content Manager OnDemand? Certain customers might receive multiple monthly 
statements.
In general, you identify the documents by creating an SQL query that uses index fields and 
values that uniquely identify the documents that you want to retrieve when they are loaded. 
Y ou can then define the distribution to include multiple report bundles with different SQL 
queries for each bundle. If the SQL must retrieve the document that is the same except for a 
value that identifies the recipient, a single distribution can be used with a recipient list. In this 
case, the SQL specifies a wildcard value. When processing, ODF fills in the recipient ID in the 
SQL statement. For example, a recipient list contains recipients 100001, 100002, and 100003 
and an SQL statement of “Where branch_id = '$ODF_RECIPIENT'”. When this recipient list is 
processed, ODF creates a distribution for recipient 100001 with all reports where branch_id = 
'100001', recipient 100002 will receive a distribution that contains all reports where branch_id 
= '100002', and so on.
14.1.2  Who receives the documents
In our example, each customer needs a statement copy every month. To identify the 
customers to Content Manager OnDemand, an ODF recipient must be created for each 
customer. Depending on how the documents are delivered, a destination must be set up. For 
example, if a set of documents will be delivered to a recipient by using email, an email 
address must be specified in the recipient definition.
14.1.3  When the documents are retrieved and delivered
ODF operates throughout the 24-hour day. Y ou can schedule your distributions to be 
processed at a specific time of day or processed as they are loaded. To specify when the 
distribution is delivered, choose the method, which is either Loaded, All Ready, Time of Day, 
Time of Print, or external.