Scheduling report deliveries

A schedule is a pack rather than a single report: one email, one cadence, several reports inside it. Giving somebody a report to open themselves is a different thing, covered in Sharing reports.

Setting one up

It is a wizard rather than a form, and it tells you where you are: Name, Reports, When, Recipients, then Review. You can go Back at any point.

1. Choose Reports, then Scheduled deliveries under Schedules in the left-hand list, and choose New schedule.
2. Name. Recipients see this as the subject line, so name it after the send rather than after the reports: a pack can change what it contains. The name is required, and Continue will not move until you give it one.
3. Reports. Add at least one. The order you put them in is the order they appear in the email and in the delivery history. Adding a second report does not create a second delivery: one pack is one email.
4. When. Choose Once, Every weekday, Weekly or Monthly, then the day and the time. Choosing Monthly changes the day row to On a date or On a weekday. The timezone is shown but cannot be changed here.
5. Recipients. Search for people and groups, or choose Browse everyone if you would rather look than type. The search takes a name, an email, a job title or a department. For somebody outside Learnient, use External email instead. Each recipient then carries their own mode: Their own data, which is what everybody starts on, or Your view.
6. Confirm, if anybody is getting your view. This step only exists when somebody is, and the wizard grows from five steps to six as you add them.
7. Review, then save. Nothing sends until it is saved and the time comes round.

Sending your view to somebody else needs an explicit acknowledgement, because it shows them rows they could not otherwise see. You are told how many recipients it affects, and you confirm that they are allowed to see every row in those reports and that sending it outside Learnient is permitted. It is recorded against your name and shown on every run in the delivery history, so it is not a one-off signature you sign and forget.

Somebody outside your organisation can only ever receive your view, having no data of their own. Their row says so: External — no data access.

What arrives, and when

The email carries download links rather than attachments. People inside your organisation get a link to their exports page; somebody outside gets a link that expires.

Schedules are checked every fifteen minutes, so a delivery can arrive a little after the time you set rather than on the minute. The reports are generated in order too, so a large pack can take a few more minutes to land.

The schedule keeps its own timezone, taken from your account’s when you create it. You do not choose it: the field is shown while you are setting the schedule up and cannot be edited. Changing the account timezone afterwards does not move schedules that already exist.

The cadence summary and the next send date are not worked out while you are creating it. Both appear only once the schedule is saved.

When there is nothing to send

A report with no rows is left out of the email and recorded as having had nothing in scope. If every report in the pack is empty, no email is sent at all.

That is worth knowing before you assume a schedule is broken. A silent Monday can mean there was nothing to report.

A schedule whose recipients have all been archived pauses itself and says why, and starts again if one of them becomes active.