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Export to PDF

Owned by Miks Valers
Last updated: Aug 05, 2022 by Gvido
2 min read

If you would like to export table reports, Gantt charts, Gauge charts, or dashboard pages to PDF or if you would like to send regular emails with dashboards as PDF attachments, then you need to install the headless Google Chrome browser on your server. Google Chrome on the server will be used by flex.bi to convert flex.bi web pages to PDF files.

Remove PhantomJS settings

The previous solution using PhantomJS is deprecated and not recommended anymore. If you have installed and configured PhantomJS for previous flex.bi Enterprise versions then please remove PhantomJS settings from the eazybi.toml file:

# Delete these lines
[phantomjs]
location = "..."

Install Google Chrome on the server

Linux

Install the google-chrome-stable package on your server. Here are example how to do it on Ubuntu and RedHat.

Ubuntu

Install from the Google Chrome repository.

wget -q -O - https://dl-ssl.google.com/linux/linux_signing_key.pub | sudo apt-key add -
echo 'deb [arch=amd64] http://dl.google.com/linux/chrome/deb/ stable main' | sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/google-chrome.list
sudo apt-get update 
sudo apt-get install google-chrome-stable

RedHat

Enable Google YUM repository:

cat << EOF > /etc/yum.repos.d/google-chrome.repo
[google-chrome]
name=google-chrome - \$basearch
baseurl=http://dl.google.com/linux/chrome/rpm/stable/\$basearch
enabled=1
gpgcheck=1
gpgkey=https://dl-ssl.google.com/linux/linux_signing_key.pub
EOF

Install the package:

yum install google-chrome-stable

Windows

Download and install the Google Chrome for Windows. Please ensure that you have version 62 or later.

macOS

Download and install the Google Chrome for macOS. Please ensure that you have version 62 or later.

Restart flex.bi Enterprise

After you have installed Google Chrome, please restart flex.bi Enterprise.

During the startup, flex.bi will detect installed Google Chrome and will start to use it for PDF exports. Please visit any dashboard page and try to export it to PDF.

Troubleshooting

If for some reason you can't use Google Chrome there is an option to use Chromium browser, it should work the same as Google Chrome, just point to the right executable as described below.

If you see an error message "Google Chrome is not found on the server." then you could try to specify the path to it manually in the eazybi.toml file:

[google_chrome]
location = '/some_other_location/google-chrome'

If you have any problems with PDF export after Google Chrome is installed then check:

  • System Administration / System Events page and see if you have any errors there.
  • Check the log/eazybi-web.log file.

Please download eazyBI log files from the Troubleshooting page and send to flex.bi support if you need help with solving PDF export problems.