Scheduling a report

Prerequisites

Schedule reports from the Status tab

  • Either create a new saved report or select existing Saved Reports from left pane in Status tab, then select the saved report(s) from the list. Make sure the report is saved with a ‘last’ time frame (E.g. Last Seven Days).

  • Click the ‘clock’ icon to Schedule an emailed report. It can be found at the top under Current report. It will launch the Schedule Report modal.

  • Schedule Report modal

  • Email Subject: This field is mandatory and is auto filled with the Report name when coming from the Status tab. The subject of the email can be changed here.

  • PDF / CSV: Check these boxes to attach the report in PDF or CSV format.

  • Frequency and Time: This report will kick off on the current day:

    • Hourly: Specify the minute each hour that report(s) will run

    • Daily: Specify the hour, minute, and AM/PM that report(s) will run each day

    • Weekly: Specify the hour, minute, AM/PM, and day of week that report will run each week

    • Monthly: Specify the hour, minute, AM/PM, and day of month that report will run each month

  • Recipients: Enter the email address(es) of recipients here.This field is mandatory and must include at least one recipient’s email address. Multiple email addresses may be separated by commas, semi-colons, or spaces, and may be entered all on one line, or on separate lines.

  • Include/Exclude: This section shows which reports are in the scheduled report (Included) and which ones are not, but are available to add to this schedule (Excluded). At least one report must be in the Include section. By default, when scheduling from the Status tab, the saved report being viewed will be automatically included. Add more reports to a scheduled report by selecting from the Exclude list and clicking the double left arrows (<<) to move it to the Include list.

  • Click ‘Save’ to add any selections to the Scheduled Report list.

  • To monitor and manage the Scheduled Report go to Admin > Reports > Scheduled Reports.

Important

Make sure the report is saved with a ‘last’ time frame (E.g. Last Seven Days). If the frequency is set to ‘Hourly’ for example, a report will be emailed every hour which shows the last seven days. Also, in order to avoid excessive processing overhead, try to avoid scheduling multiple reports to run at the same time.

Managing scheduled reports

Scheduled reports can be managed at: Admin > Reports > Scheduled Email Reports. This page will list all existing scheduled reports. Columns in this page include:

  • Action

  • Edit Schedule – opens the Schedule Report modal allowing changes to any aspect of the scheduled report.

  • Send Now – email this report on-demand

  • Disable - checkbox

  • Email Subject

  • Schedule

    • Hourly

    • Daily

    • Weekly

    • Monthly

  • Time – scheduled time for report

  • Day of Week – scheduled day for report

  • Day # - scheduled day of month for report

  • Execute Time – the amount of time taken the last time the scheduled report has run

  • Last Sent – timestamp for last time the scheduled report has run

  • Recipients – email addresses configured to receive this scheduled report

Note

Email Subject and Included Reports do not auto fill when scheduling from the Admin tab.

  • The following buttons provide other actions:

    • Delete - deletes any selected Scheduled Reports (leaves the Saved reports intact)

    • Schedule Reports – opens the Schedule Report modal, allowing for scheduling of one or more Saved Reports.

Best practices in scheduling reports

The Admin > Reports > Settings includes all of the server preferences that affect reporting. The following settings are critical to Scheduled Reports:

  • Max Report Processes - Each report that is run will use this as a maximum number of sub processes. It breaks reports up by time or exporters depending on the method that will be faster. The default is 4 and the default memory allocation per process is 1024MB.

  • Max Reports per Email - The maximum number of saved reports a user is allowed to include in a scheduled email report. Including too many reports in a single email can result in timeouts. The default is 5.

  • Max Reports per Interval - This is the maximum number of reports that users are able to schedule for the same minute. The default is 5.

Note

Here’s how to calculate how scheduling reports will affect the server. Four processes are created per report x 1024 MB = 4096 MB per report. The maximum scheduled reports per interval is 5 * 4096MB which is equal to 20,480MB. If the server is configured with 16GB of memory, this feature will not work. To continue either decrease the number of reports per interval or add memory to the server. In addition to the memory used by the scheduled email reports, keep in mind the other tasks that are consuming resources.

When possible, schedule reports at off-times, when other processes are resting. Avoid scheduling reports during heavy daytime processing or during server or database backup times. Daily reports can run anytime during the day or night by saving the report with a timeframe of ‘Yesterday’, which will always run from 00:00 – 23:59 of the previous day.