Advanced Reporting provides two ways to save out results to be viewed at a later date, archives and schedules. These functions allow you to execute a report for later viewing, either through an archived set of results or through scheduled recurring executions, or both.
By the end of this section you will be able to:
Create new archives of your reports.
Manipulate archived report results.
Create a scheduled execution recurrence for your reports.
Manipulate delivery options for scheduled reports.
Create a recurring archive schedule.
This section contains the following topics:
| Understanding archives and schedules | Learn the difference between archives and schedules, and when which option is appropriate for your use |
| Creating and manipulating archives | How to create and manipulate an archived view of your report |
| Creating and managing schedules | How to create and managing a scheduled execution of your report |
One of the obvious benefits of Advanced Reporting is its ability to execute queries against your data source in real-time, providing access to live data for all your users. However, in some cases, you can choose a user that should have access to only archived results instead of real-time. Likewise, it may be necessary to create a scheduled recurrence for a report to show date or time sensitive results of the same report. And in still other cases, you may need to schedule recurring executions to in turn create archived result sets your users can manipulate as reports.
An archive is a saved result set based on a particular execution of a report. You can have as many archives of a particular report as you’d like. Common situations where you might choose to create an archive are:
You require a snapshot of data from the same report over time.
A results set is difficult or impossible to reproduce because it is date sensitive.
You require results from the same report but executed with different runtime parameters.
A report is known to take significant time to execute, and you’d like to provide view but not execute privileges to users.
You want to provide your management users quick access to Analytics and Charting.
Data in your target database changes over time but you require date specific views.
An archived result set can be launched and manipulated with all the functionality of a standard report save the ability to modify the runtime parameters and execute schedules. This means you can use the Analytics and Charting pages, filter the results, group, sort, assign security privileges, and so on.
A schedule is a definition for recurring report execution. You can have as many schedules for a particular report as you’d like. Common situations where you might choose to create a schedule are as follows:
You want a single report to execute on a recurring schedule with the same parameters.
You want a single report to execute on a recurring schedule with parameters keyed by the date of the individual execution.
You want a single report to execute for delivery to two or more users with varying security privileges.
You want to send a report execution result to individuals who don’t have Advanced Reporting access, or you’d like them to not log in to Advanced Reporting in order to view results.
You want to schedule a report to execute during off-peak usage hours.
A schedule provides a template for creating recurring executions of a particular report. If your report contains runtime criteria, you must provide that criteria at the time you create your schedule. You can use variables, such as user defined fields and date keywords for runtime parameters during scheduling, as you can with any report execution. For a complete list of date keywords, see the Using Runtime Keywords section.
When you execute a report and receive results, you have the option to create an archive of those results using the 
Archive action in the action bar displayed on the report results page. Executing the Archive action pulls the results from the database at the time of the execution and saves them serialized in the local Advanced Reporting database. For this reason, subsequent requests for the archived set do not result in a call to your target database and can be saved forever – even if the data in your target database changes.
To create an archive, click the Archive icon to the far right of the page while viewing the report results.
You can name the archive or accept the default name based on the title of the report. When you create an archive, you can access it using the Archives tab on the Report Home page. The Archives Listing will display all archives you have permission to view, exactly as the Reports Listing does. You can filter your view of archives by title, tag, datasource, and so on.
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Because an archive behaves exactly as an actual report in the system, individual user permissions are maintained during report view. |
The Archive Listing displays the date created, report title, report creator, record count, and size in KB of the archived set in the database.
Clicking an archive title from the listing launches the results. Because the archived results are serialized to the local Advanced Reporting database, there is no communication with your target database for viewing archived results. Instead, you can return large result sets instantly to the browser. When viewing an archive, it behaves exactly as real-time report execution, with all the same options for manipulation save changing the runtime parameters and creating a schedule.
Many reports in your system will be prime candidates for executing on a recurring basis without need for user interaction. A great example being Weekly Revenue – this might be a report you would like to execute every Monday morning at 8:00 am and have the results delivered to your staff or management team. Advanced Reporting satisfies this recurrence requirement through the use of the scheduling functionality, and also provides many delivery options to fit the needs of different types of users.
To create a schedule for a given report, browse to the report details page and inside the Schedules tab click the 
New Schedule action in the action bar. This opens the Report Schedule dialog box for you to create the schedule definition.
Use the controls on the Report Schedule dialog box as follows:
| Schedule tab |
This tab provides inputs for the schedule (defaults to the report title), a beginning and optional ending date for the schedule, a start time for the execution to run, and a variable recurrence. This is your opportunity to provide specifics about when and how often the scheduler should fire, creating a new scheduled instance each time. Advanced Reporting provides standard recurrence intervals, such as daily, weekly, etc., and also provides you the ability to enter a custom cron expression for any type of recurrence definition. You may disable the schedule by clicking the disable check box. You can also execute the schedule in background immediately by clicking on the Run Now button.
If the report uses tables from a mapping suite, the Tables tab allows you to specify which table from the mapping suite you want to use for the scheduled report run. |
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| Report Parameters tab | This tab provides inputs for report runtime parameters if any exist. Just like with standard report executions, if you choose to leave a non-required field blank, that query option will be ignored and all results will be returned. This is also your opportunity to use date sensitive keywords such as TODAY-7 to provide context sensitive results with each new execution of the schedule. For a complete list of these runtime keywords, see to Using Runtime Keywords. |
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| Archive tab | This tab allows you to specify if a new archived result set should be created each time the schedule executes. If you select Create a New Archive, a new archive will be created with each execution and assigned to the schedule creator and any additional users and groups defined in the space provided. Note you also have the option to create the archive only if > X records are selected by the scheduled execution. If you’d like an email to be sent to the users specified as recipients, check the Send email check box. Creating an archive as the result of a schedule is particularly useful for large reports you’d like your users to view but not execute. For example, if you have a large course history report that executes monthly and returns a large amount of data, you can choose to not allow users to execute the report, but instead assign them as recipients of the scheduled archived results. Using this method, the query is only executed when against your database, and subsequent requests will return the records already serialized to the Advanced Reporting database. This enables the optimal situation of instant results secured per user without performing queries against the target database. |
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| Email tab |
This allows you to provide a list of email addresses to receive scheduled report results in the file format specified. These emails do not need to be actual Advanced Reporting users. In fact, if you are intending to send results to Advanced Reporting users, it is suggested you use the archive tab instead as those users will view the results with their security settings applied. Emailed scheduled results execute with the security privileges of the individual who defined the schedule. When scheduling a report to e-mail, there is an option that allows you to e-mail an export of a subset of report results to a pre-defined e-mail address associated with the records. You can specify this behavior by checking the Selectively e-mail report results check box. Then, you would select the column from the report that contains the e-mail address information. This can be either a visible or hidden field. The results for these exports will retain the same layout of the report when it is wholly run (the same groups, the same calculations, and so on.) but will only contain those records that have the same e-mail address. Any e-mails included in the Email Addresses textbox will be sent the full report export. If the Selectively e-mail report results check box is selected but no field is selected for the e-mail address, the burst e-mail will not occur, and vice versa. Comma-separated e-mails are supported in the results. Each e-mail in the list will be sent the same export file. However, if an e-mail is in a list of one record and in a different list or by itself in another record, the e-mail will be sent multiple exports. The results will not be combined for this e-mail. |
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| Export tab | This allows you to define a server side export for the schedule on each execution. You can export to Advanced Reporting supported export formats and have the results saved to a network location visible from the Advanced Reporting web server. For the Output File or Folder option, specify a folder or file to save report results. If a folder is specified, Advanced Reporting will save the report results there and will give the file a unique name each time based on the date of execution. If a file is specified, Advanced Reporting will save the results, overwriting the file each time the report is run. |
Click Save on the Report Schedule dialog when you have completed defining your schedule. It will then appear in the Active Schedules listing for your report. You can view, edit, and delete active schedules at any time by clicking the schedule title in the list. You can also view and English-like translation of the defined recurrence, and the next fire time.
If you have access to the Admin module, you can view, edit, and delete all schedules defined in the system by going to the Admin home page and clicking the Schedules tab. For more information on the Admin module, see Using the administration module.
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