Is there a way to automate Excel export of Folder Contents?

[CD_10403509]

Hello all, 

Does anyone know if there is a way to automate, or even just hotlink, direct downloads of Folder Contents to Excel lists, using the path Actions --> Export List to File --> Export to .xlsx, within a Product/Library directory?

My organization keeps dedicated Promotion Requests folders that I periodically export as Excel lists to gauge promotion approval counts on a regular cadence. Both for the sake of consistency and because getting to the download links requires manually navigating through nested folders in multiple Product directories, I was wondering if anyone knows if any degree of automation can be achieved with a script or the like. The download URLs given by my browser alongside the .xlsx files appear to be temporary.

I've been able to successfully connect the Desktop Integration to Excel, but I don't see any options for importing folder contents lists directly from Windchill into Excel. 

[Marco_Tosin]

If you need a list of completed promotions, you can take a look at this discussion where a document, with several ready-to-use reports that can also be exported to Excel format, is bookmarked.

https://community.ptc.com/t5/Windchill/How-to-generate-a-report-of-all-completed-Promotion-Requests/m-p/700800#M63202

[aaronjlarson · Accepted solution]

In addition to what @Marco_Tosin already posted, I'd also encourage you to checkout the Resource for reporting - PTC Community which he helped setup.

 It's a great resource for new report writers and admins on a variety of topics.  For your current question, I do think that a Query Builder report paired with a data monitor would be your best bet longer term.  Depending on your needs, you could define the report to do your tallying (e.g. promotion approval per time period or other parameter) for you or have it set up to return all the raw data which you can manipulate outside of the system.  The Data Monitor allows you to have the report run on a scheduled cadence of your choosing, and when the report meets the minimum result threshold which you define, can be emailed to a list of users that you specify in any number of formats of which CSV is one.  It sounds like you're interested to know of the promotion approvals broken out by container and/or subfolder.  You can include this information in your Query Builder design.