Note you need to select the correct server type before exporting the XSL-FO file since for the use of the Cloud server the XSL-FO file will contain a reference to your FO Designer license. This will be used to authenticate your requests.

One of the capabilities of the premium and cloud servers is that they can send the report files per email. This feature can also be tested without the server.

First you need to set up the mail server in the windows preferences. This is for example the setup for a hotmail account (of course use your account instead of java4less@hotmail.com)

Second you can test it with our example LetterMail.xre. In the properties of the report, the „Send mail“ flag has been selected. Make sure you add also the fields:

• Mail to: this is the recipient, it will commonly be an XPATH to a node in the XML file. In this example /InterestLetter/Person/email

• Att. Name: this is the attachment name (PDF). It can be a constant name or you can combine it with data from the XML file. For example you could have:
  
  concat('Letter' , /InterestLetter/Person/LastName , '.pdf')
  
  this would create LetterSmith.pdf  as attachment name.
• Subject: The subject of the email
• Body: The body of the email. In these fields you can use %1 to %5. These place holders will be replaced by the Xpath variales 1 to 5. In this example we set the product name in the subject of the email.

The result of executing the report using the PDF button should an email as below:

This will work in the same in the server side since the generated XSL-FO will contain the required service metadata (see below) which will be used by the server to send the email.

You  can protect (encrypt) your PDF files to prevent unauthorized use. This is useful for protecting sensitive data as for example price lists.

You can:

• Ask the end user to enter a password to open a file
• or avoid printing the PDF
• or avoid copy/paste or editing of data

This is how you setup PDF protection. In the Report properties > Protect tab you can define protection level. The properties are:

• Protect PDF: Yes/No.
• Owner password: this is is the master password which would allow you to change the permissions if your PDF reader has such functionality. It can be a constant value of a Xpath to the XML document.
• Open PDF password: this is the password required to open the document. You would give this password to the intended document recipients.
• Protect printing: disables PDF printing.
• Protect copying/editing: disables copy/paste and editing.

Note this functionality is available in the Premium or Cloud FOP servers only.

The Inhouse Premium Server and the J4L Cloud FOP server can create Excel (xlsx)  files for your reports. The Excel files will include:

• font size, style and color
• cell background color
• overall design of the page
• images (each image must fit in one cell)

For Excel files you will however not get the same what you see is what you get result as for PDF.

Note in order to get the best results in Excel you have to use row and column markers since these will be used to create the rows and cells in the excel file. Ideally you should create separate templates specific for Excel.

Objects as Memo fields, boxes, charts or barcodes are not supported in the Excel output.

There two ways of creating the Excel output outside the designer:

1. Flag the report as "Excel only" in the report's properties
   
   
   
   this will generate an XSL-FO file (see code below) which later will be recognized as "Excel output only" by the J4L FOP Server. In this case no PDF output is possible for this report.
   
   
   
   
   
2. If you need to use the same report for PDF and Excel output, the other option is adding ?XLS=1 to the Server URL to enable the Excel output. For example
   
   http://localhost:8087/J4LFOPServer/Apex?XLS=1
   
   
   

Example of an Excel output: