Summary
Using custom report schedules, you can create an automation which sends out copies of a report to a select group of staff within your organisation. The report can be scheduled to send out to users based upon a defined frequency, along with a custom message and unique user viewing settings. This guide will show you how to set up report scheduling to send reports automatically via email.
Step 1 - Navigate
You can find the custom reports area on your platform by going to the following, whilst logged in as a site administrator:
Site Administration > Reports > Custom reports
Step 2 - Creating a report schedule
Within the Custom reports page, you’ll need to click into the name of the report you wish to add a schedule to. There are then two key areas which require setting up in order to enable the automatic sending of reports, we’ll touch more on these below.
Creating a report audience
In order to set up reports to be sent out periodically, you first need to establish the audience that will have access to/be sent the report data.
As shown below, you’ll need to click into the “Audience” tab of the report builder in order to access this area.
Within this Audience area, you can see the various options for different users/roles which can be given access to the report schedule. From individual users to specific roles of other groupings, you can select your required audience within this area. For our example, we’ll be giving all managers with “Reporting access” enabled the option to view this report.
Creating report schedules
Now that you’ve created an audience to be given access to the report, you can begin creating your report schedule. You can initiate this process by clicking into the “Schedules” tab of the report and clicking “New schedule”.
This will then open the schedule creation window. Here you’ll need to provide all the information required for each section marked with an exclamation mark, all other sections are optional. We’ll take a look at each of the key sections below.
General - In this section you’ll need to provide the essential Schedule information.
- Name - This is the name of the report as shown in the list of report schedules.
- Format - This is the file format that the report data will be sent in.
- Starting from - This will be the date the first scheduled report is sent out.
- Recurrence - This option sets the frequency in which reports are sent out, with the start date being the date setup in the previous step and the recurrence period setting the frequency of report schedules thereafter.
- View report data as - There are several options here as to how the report data is received by the scheduled report recipient:
- Schedule creator - This will provide the recipient with access to all of the data which the report creator can see, most likely the report will have been created by an Administrator and therefore they will have access to all of the data within the report.
- Schedule recipient - This option will allow the recipient to only see report data which is applicable to them based upon their hierarchy.
- Schedule user - This option will allow the recipient to see report data based upon a defined users hierarchy. In the user search area which appears below, you’ll have the option to select the required user. Recipients of the report will then be able to see whatever data that specified user is set to see based upon their hierarchy.
Audience - As we touched on earlier in the guide, the audience options available in this section will reflect the newly created audiences which have been setup in the previous step. As shown below, we’ll have the option to select our defined audience:
Message content - This section allows you to create a custom message to send out to recipients of the report, along with the report data.
- Subject - This option is used to set the email subject heading, this should be set to a relevant and informative subject which will make sense to recipients of the email.
- Body - This option is used to create the body of text which will be included with your scheduled email. This can be used to provide a brief description of the data included along with any other relevant information.
Advanced - The advanced options allow you to dictate what happens if the report is empty and includes no data.
Step 3 - Save
Once you’ve followed the steps above, you’ll be able to scroll to the bottom of the schedule creation window and click “Save”.
You’ll then be able to see your new report schedule from the schedules tab. This will automatically be toggled to active and start sending to your audience based upon your defined schedule settings.
To disable the report, simply click the “toggle” button the the left of the schedule name and this will disable the automatic sending of the report.