Scheduled reports and distribution
Quick answer
Deliver reports to people who never log in, without generating a nightly storm of PDFs.
Key takeaways
- Reports run with the owner permissions, not the recipient
- Small, focused outputs beat large exports
- Group recipients keep distribution lists current
- Generation and delivery are separate, check both when troubleshooting
How distribution works
A scheduled report record picks a report or dashboard, a schedule, a format such as PDF or CSV, and recipients as users, groups or an email address list. Delivery runs as a background job.
Keeping it useful
Send the smallest thing that answers the question. A single score with a trend line beats a forty page list export that nobody opens, and it costs far less to generate.
Common problems
Most scheduled report tickets have the same causes.
- The report runs as the schedule owner, so recipients may see data the owner can see
- Large exports time out, filter by date or reduce columns
- Recipients in a group inherit changes to that group, which is usually what you want
- Check the email log when a report does not arrive, delivery and generation are separate steps
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Check your understanding
Whose permissions apply to a scheduled report?
- A. Each recipient
- B. The schedule owner
- C. The admin
- D. The group manager
Show answer
B. The schedule owner
Data is generated once under the owner context.
What is the first check when a scheduled report is not received?
- A. ACL debug
- B. The email log
- C. Table index
- D. Update sets
Show answer
B. The email log
The email log shows whether the message was generated and sent.