A while ago I posted the URL for calling a .HTM file from within Managed Reporting(and therefore Dashboard). Recently I found out that with a little variation you can call any file type. This allows the embedding of multimedia files (e.g. WMV, MP3, AVI files) within a HTML page in Managed Reporting or Dashboard.

Assuming that you have imported the file into the "Other Files" folder in a Domain and have added the correct MIME types to mime.wfs (more on this below) Then the URL used is as follows:

WFServlet?IBIMR_action=MR_RUN_FEX&IBIMR_sub_action=MR_OTHER_SECTION
&IBIMR_domain=domain/domain.htm&IBIMR_fex=app/media.wmv

To embed a WMV file (with Windows Media Player into a page you can use:

<object id="MediaPlayer" width=320 height=286 classid="CLSID:22D6f312-B0F6-11D0-94AB-080C74C7E95" standby="Loading Windows Media Player components..." 
type="application/x-oleobject" codebase="http://activex.microsoft.com/activex/controls/mplayer/en/nsmp2inf.cab
#Version=6,4,7,1112"> 
<param name="filename" value="WFServlet?IBIMR_action=MR_RUN_FEX&IBIMR_sub_action=MR_OTHER_SECTION&IBIMR_domain=domain/domain.htm&IBIMR_fex=app/media.wmv">
<param name="Showcontrols" value="True">
<param name="autoStart" value="True"> 
<embed type="application/x-mplayer2" src="WFServlet?IBIMR_action=MR_RUN_FEX&IBIMR_sub_action=MR_OTHER_SECTION&IBIMR_domain=domain/domain.htm&IBIMR_fex=app/media.wmv" 
name="MediaPlayer" width=320 height=240></embed>
</object>

To really annoy users you can embed a hidden MP3 in the page using the following HTML code:

<EMBED src="WFServlet?IBIMR_action=MR_RUN_FEX&IBIMR_sub_action=MR_OTHER_SECTION&IBIMR_domain=domain/domain.htm&IBIMR_fex=app/media.mp3" autostart=true hidden=true>

One thing that I noticed is that if you don't add the MIME to mime.wfs before importing the file into Managed Reporting, then the import is done as if the file was ascii - which tends to corrupt MP3 and WMV files.

Here are a few MIME entries that I added to mime.wfs for testing this:

<ADDCOLUMNNAME>   WF_Extension   content_type    format   redirect  WFRS_Catalog  Save_Report  Client_Extension
<ADDTYPE>         .wmv           video/x-ms-wmv  binary   no        N/A           no           .wmv
<ADDTYPE>         .avi           video/x-msvideo binary   no        N/A           no           .avi
<ADDTYPE>         .mp3           audio/mpeg      binary   no        N/A           no           .mp3  

Cheers

Stu