Report Schedules can be used to automate the running of Reports.
In this article, we'll cover:
- Why use Report Schedules?
- How Report Schedules work
- How to set up a Report Schedule
- How to set up Reports that can be run on demand
TIP: You can also set up Customer List Schedules to automate exporting customer data or to send integrated emails on a regular basis.
Why use Report Schedules?
A Report Schedule allows you to:
- Automate the running and emailing of Reports at a specific time.
- Give a specific set of users the ability to run and download a Report.
You might want to use the Report Scheduler if:
- You want to automatically run a Report at regular intervals. This is particularly helpful if you have a Report that needs to be run at a certain time.
- You want to provide access to Reports for staff who don’t have access to Insights & Mailings.
- A partner company, promoter or producer wants regular Reports about their shows.
TIP: You can provide Reports to people both inside and outside of your organisation using Report Schedules.
How Report Schedules work
There are two ways Report Schedules can be run:
- As a schedule
- On demand
We’ll cover setting up both types. You can set a schedule to use one or both of these methods, and to include a range of different users.
Run as Schedule
By choosing Run as schedule, you can:
- Automate the delivery of a report to members of your team, or external partners such as promoters and producers.
- Provide the report as an attachment to the email, or via a download link included in the email.
Run on Demand
Choosing Run on demand allows you to give external partners permission to run a Report on demand using the Partner Companies Interface.
How to Set Up a Report Schedule
Report Schedules can be found in Insights & Mailings > Report Schedules.
You'll see any existing Report Schedules listed here.
REMINDER: Before you set up your new Report Schedule, you’ll need to have already created the Report and Criteria Set that you want to use in the Schedule.
- To create a new Schedule, click the Add button.
There are two tabs for you to complete when creating a new Report Schedule – Basic Details and Reports.
Basic Details
- Name: give your Schedule a clear, descriptive name.
- Description: this field is optional, but we'd recommend completing it to make the purpose of the Schedule clear to other members of your team.
- Active: this is ticked by default and ensures your Report Schedule is active.
- Run on demand: if you only tick this option then your Report will be available on demand, but won’t run on a schedule. In this case, you don’t need to fill in anything else on the Basic Details page and can skip to the Reports tab.
- Run as schedule: if you tick this option, then your Report will be able to be scheduled. In this case, you need to fill in the remaining fields on the Basic Details page, even if you have also ticked Run on demand.
TIP: It is possible to have a Report Schedule run both on demand and as a schedule.
- Run from: the date you want the Schedule to become active. This defaults to the current day, but you can change it to start on any date in the future.
- Run until: fill this in if you want your Schedule to stop after a specified period of time. To have your schedule run indefinitely, you can leave this blank.
- Occurs: choose the frequency at which the Schedule runs. You can choose from: Daily, Monthly (specific day), Weekly, Monthly.
- Recurs every: this changes depending on what you choose in the Occurs field.
Daily: choose whether you want to send a report every day (pick 1 day) or pick the number of days from the drop down list.
Monthly (specific day): choose which day of the month you want to send a report, and whether you want to send it every month or every few months.
Weekly: choose the day or days of the week that you want to send a report, and whether you want to send it every week or every few weeks.
Monthly: use this if you want to send reports on the same day of the month, e.g. on the first Monday of the month.
- Daily frequency: pick the time that you want emails to send
Runs before 08:00: pick this to ensure the report is sent before 8am. If your report does not need to be generated at a specific time but does need to be delivered by the morning, we recommend that you use this option.
Runs every: use this to send reports at intervals by number of hours. You can also set start and end times for this frequency.
Runs once at: pick the specific hour at which you want the Report to be sent.
Click Next to move through to the Reports tab, where you can choose the specific Report(s) you want to include.
Reports
Here you can choose which Reports to include in the Schedule. You can add as many reports to a Schedule as you need, and set each report to send or be available on demand to different people.
Click Add Report to start the process of adding Reports to your Schedule.
You'll then see a new screen that is similar to the Report Explorer.
From here you can search for the Report that you want to add, then click the green plus button next to it and choose which Criteria Set you want to use.
Once you've chosen your report and its Criteria Set, you then need to fill in details about who is going to have access to the Report and how it will be delivered to them.
Delivery Details
- Name: give the Report a name. You don’t have to use the name of the actual Report you are using. For example, you might want to use something like Yesterday’s Sales for a daily schedule of the Activities Report (detailed) that runs with the Criteria Set as yesterday’s date.
TIP: Both the actual name of the Report and the name you give in the Delivery Details will appear in the Schedule, so you can clearly see what reports a Schedule contains.
- Email to: enter the email addresses of every person you want to have access to or receive this Report. To include more than one email address, separate them with a comma.
WARNING: When adding email addresses for users to view the Reports, make sure this exactly matches the email address of their Spektrix User Account for the Partner Companies Interface. This is case sensitive - the Report Schedule will not identify them as the same if there are any differences in capitalisation.
WARNING: You must add the email address of anyone you want to access the Report, regardless of whether you’re running on a schedule or on demand.
- Custom subject: if you leave this blank, your email subject will default as "Your report from {ClientName}". Enter a different subject line here if you’d like to change it.
- Deliver as: if you're running a report as a schedule, choose whether to attach the file to the email or to send a link instead. If the file is too large to be sent as an email it will automatically default to being sent as a link.
WARNING: When Reports are sent by download link please note that the download link will expire after 7 days.To collect this Report after the link has expired, you can run the Report manually from the Report Explorer. If you need it to cover a certain time period, for example last week - you can update the parameters to cover this.
- File format: choose which format you want the report to be delivered as, either as a PDF, a formatted Excel file, an XML, a CSV, or an unformatted Excel file.
Once you have filled everything in, click Next to move through to the Criteria page.
Criteria
Here you can choose the specific criteria that you want the report to use:
The criteria you choose here will apply every time the report runs as part of this schedule, whether that’s in a scheduled email or when a user logs in and runs it on demand.
Click the Ok button to finish the set up. To add more Reports to the schedule, repeat the process beginning with the Add Report button.
If you need to go back and edit any of the Reports in the schedule you can click the blue pencil icon next to the report’s name, or click the red cross icon to delete a Report from the schedule.
When editing a Report Schedule, it is possible to amend the parameters within the Criteria Set, but it is not possible to choose completely different Criteria. To update the Criteria you will need to add a new Criteria Set to the Report within the Report Explorer. You’ll then need to add the updated Report to the Schedule and choose the new Criteria Set.
TIP: When new Events get added to your system that you want included in an existing Report. You can avoid having to create or update multiple schedules by using an Event Attribute to automatically include new additions.
When you add new Events to your system, as long as you add the same Event Attribute, that Event will automatically be included in the existing Report and be delivered as part of the Schedule. Learn more about using Attributes in Criteria Sets.
Watch this video to see the process of creating a Report Schedule from start to finish.
Setting up access to download reports
To download a report via a link in an email, the recipient needs to be able to log into your Spektrix system.
Existing system users will need the ‘Collect Reports’ user role added to their User Account.
Anyone outside of your organisation can be set up with a login that grants them access only to their Reports (as well as any Customer Lists set up to be accessed on demand using Customer List Schedules).
Existing Spektrix users
To make sure an existing Spektrix user can download reports from either a link or the Partner Companies Interface, you'll need to add Collect Reports to their User Account.
To do this, follow the steps below:
- Go to The Settings Interface > Users > User Accounts.
- Either create a new User, or select the user you want to update.
- Under the Roles section, check the box marked Collect Report.
- Click the Save User Account button.
Users from outside your organisation
External users need a specific type of User Account to be able to login and download their Customer Lists.
To set this up, follow the steps below:
- Go to Insights & Mailings > Report Schedules > Users.
- Select the Add button to set up a new User Account with only the Collect Reports user role. Their user will also need to be active.
- Fill in the details and set a password.
WARNING: When you set a password, communicate the password to the user in person – never write down or email passwords. If someone forgets their password, you can click on the Change Password link next to their name in the list.
The Partner Companies Interface
Reports Schedules that are set to run on demand can be accessed via the Partner Companies Interface. This is a part of your system designed to be used by people from outside of your organisation.
You can find your Partner Companies Interface by updating the following URL with your client name: https://system.spektrix.com/yourclientname/client/partner-companies
If you're not sure what your client name is, you can easily find it by logging in to Spektrix and looking at the address bar at the top of your browser window:
When the user goes to the Partner Companies Interface URL, they will see a login screen:
Once logged in, any reports which have been made available on demand to that user will show up in a list under the Reports tab.
To run a report, they'll need to select the Run button:
On Demand Collect Reports
When you make a Report available to be run on demand, you'll set the specific criteria at that time.
Partner companies or third party users can’t update Criteria Sets on their Reports – they can only run them using the criteria that you have selected, and using the specific output method you have chosen (e.g. PDF, unformatted Excel). Make this clear to anyone running Reports on demand, so that they are aware.
TIP: When setting up On Demand Collect Reports, think carefully about the date metrics that you're using – remember that the Last Week metric looks at the previous calendar week, not the previous seven days.
Further Reading
To continue learning about Reporting, why not check out the following articles:
You can find more articles on running and configuring Reports in the Reporting section of the Support Centre.