Mail & Deploy gives you full flexibility in your delivery method, so you can send out your reports in any format that is your best mode of communication within your department.
Welcome to a new #Feature Friday!
These days, a critical part of management is the flow of information. Getting the right information to the right people at the right time saves money and resources and reduces losses, while also boosting business’ resilience.
At no other time in history has there been a greater need to collaborate and work together effectively and keeping all decision-makers in the loop about the ongoing developments in the business world.
Mail & Deploy is all about making sure that insights and key information are always delivered at the fingertips of your company’s decision-makers in a way that provides appropriate visibility to help stay up to date on the most critical information and to deal quickly with problems and challenges when they do arise.
This is why we are sharing today how you proactively and automatically deliver information from QlikView and Qlik Sense right to your users with and without access to Qlik with
Report Scheduling
In general, there are 3 possible ways in Mail & Deploy how reports are distributed:
- Reports can be scheduled automatically on a regular basis and/or
- Users request the reports via the Hub and/or
- A 3rd party application requests the reports via the API
In today’s Feature Friday we are covering the former way. Report scheduling allows you to set up specific parameters to deliver information in a strategic manner. You can set up a time frame to report during, choose the frequency (e.g., daily, weekly, monthly, …), and what time of the day to send reports on in Execution Plans.
By sending and providing useful information to users on intervals, you make it easier for them to find the relevant data they need.
In detail, you can set the following attributes:
Time Zone
The time zone to apply to the execution plan; all times in the execution plan are always local times according to this time zone.
Start Date
The date-time where you want the next execution of the task to take place.
End Date
The end date is optional; if enabled, you can specify until when the execution plan shall be valid. After the end date, the task will no longer be executed on the basis of this execution plan.
Maximum Delay
The maximum delay to apply; if the scheduled next execution of the task according to the execution plan lies further in the past than the maximum delay, the task execution will be skipped and the next one in the sequence will be scheduled, until the first scheduled execution is found that is either in the future or in the past, but within the maximum delay
Frequency
The frequency determines how often the task is due to be executed.
- Daily.
- Weekdays.
If you choose this frequency, the task will be executed on the specified weekdays. - Weekly.
- Monthly.
If you choose this frequency, the task will be executed on a monthly basis (this does not equal a 30-day period, but rather to a full month; e.g. April 3rd plus 1 month will be May 3rd). You can optionally choose to stick the execution to the end of each month. - Quarterly.
If you choose this frequency, the task will be executed on a quarterly basis, which equals a 3-month period. - Yearly.
If you choose this frequency, the task will be executed on a yearly basis (this does not equal a 365-day period, but rather to a full year; e.g. April 3rd 2018 plus 1 year will be April 3rd 2019; leap years will automatically be recognized by Mail & Deploy). - Custom.
If you choose this frequency, the task will be executed in intervals as specified. However, you can limit the task execution to specific weekdays. - Calendar.
If you choose this frequency, you can select a calendar that contains the date-times on which to perform an execution. If you enable Custom Time then you can specify a custom time which will override the ones contained in the calendar; only the dates of the calendar combined with your custom time will be used then.
The logic by which the report scheduling based on execution plans are calculated by Mail & Deploy works as follows:
Let’s suppose you want the report to be delivered every Monday at 9:00 AM. To achieve this, you need to set the start date of the execution plan to 9:00 AM on the following Monday and the frequency to “Weekly”. Monday, 9:00 AM the report will be delivered and the next execution date-time will be calculated by adding the frequency (= 1 Week) to the previously planned execution date (which in this case equals the following Monday, 9:00 AM).
In short, you need to set the start date of an execution plan to the next date-time at which you want the task to be executed on the basis of the execution plan. Once the report is executed by the execution engine of Mail & Deploy Server, the date-time for the next execution will be calculated by adding the frequency to the execution date.
Mail & Deploy gives you full flexibility in your delivery method, so you can send out your reports in any format that is your best mode of communication within your department.
You want to see Mail & Deploy in action? Then get started today and request an individual webinar.