How to Create a Scheduled Report

Report Manager allows you to create schedules to generate reports automatically, by setting up a profile for a scheduled report. The profile is a set of criteria you select to create the schedule for a report. You select the following criteria to create the schedule:

  • A report
  • Customers for who the report will be run
  • Report parameters
  • Scheduling and delivery details

Scheduled reports run daily, weekly, or monthly. This allows you to provide your customers with timely information about the services provided, and the health of their systems.

Use the Report Wizard to create a scheduled report profile. To access the Report Wizard, navigate to Scheduled Reports and click Create New.

You can also schedule a report from any report parameters page. However, this will only allow you to generate a single report for all customers selected, without the option to run an individual report for each selected customer.

The Report Wizard is essentially comprised of two phases:

  1. The first phase consists of three tabs that deal with the report itself. The profile criteria you select in this phase are for the report, customers, and parameters you want to include in the report.
  2. The second phase consists of four tabs that deal with the profile criteria for the delivery schedule aspects of the report. This is where you specify the email recipients or fileshare destination, and set the delivery schedule.

Select a Report

You can filter on the category of report you want to schedule.

Select a Customer

For some reports you can select an entire Service Organization (SO), and optionally filter on customers within the SO. Filter the customer list to select only specific customers from the SO. If you do not select to filter the customer list the report will be generated for all customers of the SO.

The customers who will be included in the report is resolved when the report is run. If a customer is added to the SO after the report is scheduled, that new customer will be included in the report. Likewise, if a customer is removed from the SO, they will not be included in the report. Selecting the SO (without filtering the customer list) is advantageous because you will not need to be concerned about all customers within the SO.

Other reports are not associated with an SO. Therefore select one or more customers as appropriate.

By default you generate a single report that contains all customers. You can also choose to generate one report for each customer.

Select Parameters

In this tab you select the various elements of the report, including the following:

Start and End Dates, and Report Format are ignored when scheduling a report. They are only used when previewing or immediately running the report.

  • In the customer list, the customer name appearing in bold signifies that this customer will be used as the example for previewing the report.
  • Optionally, Preview the report to check that the parameters and settings have rendered correctly.

Click Schedule Report to configure the profile criteria for the delivery schedule aspects of the report, starting with the Main Details tab.

Main Details

This tab shows the name of the schedule, and the owner as the currently logged-on user. If you are previewing the report, select the export format in which you want to view it. The Report Format is ignored when scheduling a report.

Delivery Details

The scheduled report can be configured for delivery by Email (default) or to a File Share. The email subject and file share file name are preloaded with the [CUSTOMERNAME] token and the Report Name, and the email body contains boilerplate text including the Report Name.

A token is like a replacement tag for specific information. In this example, the [CUSTOMERNAME] token will be replaced by the name of the customer that Report Manager will use to schedule the report. The following additional tokens are available for use, and can be inserted into the email subject and body, and the file share file name:

  • [SCHEDULEDELIVERYDATE] - represents the date for which the report is scheduled to be run.

    Use the [SCHEDULEDELIVERYDATE] token only when saving the report to a file share. Do not use it in an email subject.

  • [REPORTEXECUTIONTIME] - represents the time that the report was run.
  • [REPORTNAME] - represents the name of the report.
  • [PARENTCOMPANY] - represents the customer's Service Organization name.

When a single report is run and it is emailed, or sent to a file share, the file name may not contain the name of the customer, depending on how the report was configured. The table below shows the differences in the file name based the number of customers chosen and the type of report generated. Note that the [CUSTOMERNAME] token in the table below will be replaced by the actual name of the customer for whom the report is generated.

Number of Customers Report Generated File Name
One One Report per Customer [CUSTOMERNAME]_Report Name
One One Report for all Customers [CUSTOMERNAME]_Report Name
Multiple One Report per Customer [CUSTOMERNAME]_Report Name
Multiple One Report for all Customers Multiple Customers_Report Name

Any special characters (other than @, -, _ and . ) contained in the Customer Name or Report Name will be removed from the file share file name when the report is run.

If you select File Share, you will need to specify the shared folder location using a valid UNC path. The Report Name will also include the date the report schedule was last saved.

File Share as a delivery method may not be available, depending on your system setup. This setting is controlled in the Advanced Settings of the Administration Console.

Email schedules are delivered with low priority by default if you are using Microsoft SQL Server 2012. To fix this issue, apply the Cumulative update package 3 for SQL Server 2012. For more information, refer to http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2731402.

Schedule

On this tab you set up the schedule details for the report.

Options for Report Period vary depending on the reports being scheduled:

  • Managed Assets reports do not have a Report Period as they are point-in-time reports.
  • The Executive Summary report does not have the options Last Day and Last Three Months.
  • The Patch Status report has options based on the fact that it has no Start Date, only an End Date.
Report Period Description
Last Day The report will include information for the calendar day immediately before report run-time. For example, if the report is run on Tuesday, it will contain information for Monday.
Last 7 Days The report will include information for the 7 calendar days immediately before the report run-time. For example, if the report is run on October 4th, it will contain information for the prior 7 days up to and including October 3rd.
Last 14 Days The report will include information for the 14 calendar days immediately before report run-time. For example, if the report is run on October 4th, it will contain information for the prior 14 days up to and including October 3rd.
Last 30 Days The report will include information for the 30 calendar days immediately before report run-time. For example, if the report is run on October 4th, it will contain information for the prior 30 days up to and including October 3rd.
Last 90 Days The report will include information for the 90 calendar days immediately before report run-time. For example, if the report is run on October 4th, it will contain information for the prior 90 days up to and including October 3rd.
Last 365 Days The report will include information for the 365 calendar days immediately before report run-time. For example, if the report is run on October 4th, it will contain information for the prior 365 days up to and including October 3rd.
Last Month The report will include information for the calendar month immediately before report run-time. For example, if report run-time is in July, the report will cover June 1 to June 31
Last Three Months The report will include information for the three calendar months immediately before report run-time. For example, if report run-time is in July, the report will cover all of April, May, and June.
Last Quarter

The report will include information for the quarter immediately before report run-time:

  • Q1=Jan 01 to Mar 31
  • Q2=April 01 to June 31
  • Q3=July 01 to Sept 30
  • Q4=Oct 01 to Dec 31.
Last Year

The report will include information for the last calendar year. For example, if the report is run on October 4, 2016, the report will contain information for the period from January 1, 2015 to December 31, 2015.

Summary

Review the settings on this tab before you finish and load the scheduled report into the system.

To change a setting, click the tabs to change the schedule's settings.