Snapshots with Report Scheduling

Snapshots, are a feature that can be used in report scheduling as a way of progress tracking. When you run any custom report, it will automatically generate a snapshot. To run a report simply go to Reports > Manage Custom Reports. Then choose the report you want to run and click Run Now. Then run a report as normal.

A snapshot of this page and all the information will be created automatically and be saved under snapshots, which you can then view until archived. Each snapshot will appear and have a default expiry date - you can extend that expiry date when viewing an individual screenshot.

The snapshot will essentially show a screenshot of the information from running the report on that day. So you will have a record of the reports data from that time. 

For example, you might create a report to view all absences that came up in the previous week, then run a report for the week after, and the week after that. Then you can view these reports under snapshots and quickly jump between reports allowing you to be able to compare absences.
An advantage of this is that if you, for example, chose to create a monthly snapshot, you could easily track and compare monthly progress.

Why are Snapshots useful?

This feature is helpful for many reasons. Firstly, searching through snapshots is much faster than manually filtering repeatedly for specific dates. This feature helps limit the administrative burden of searching through data.

It saves every period you search, so you can run the report multiple times, comparing different things whilst being data efficient. 

Snapshots are also a handy way to show progression in training. For example, it might show all the ongoing training stages and certificates and the percentages of staff members who completed them. Then, you can conduct this every month to track progress between months.

This feature is also a great way to help share information between managers. Snapshots are readily available to share and email to others on the team.

Scheduling and Snapshots

You can also set up reports so they repeat on a schedule at a particular time, i.e., once a month or once a week at the start/end of every month. Once you have established a specific time frame and set up a schedule, you can quickly build up a list of snapshots making comparison between different periods easy. 

To set this up go back to the Manage Custom Reports page, click the MORE button next to the report you want to schedule and select Schedule Report. 

You can then set up how frequently you want the scheduled report to run, what period it should look at, and at what time of day this should be. 

So this could be: Repeated every week, on Mondays at 7am, covering the data 8 days before the date the report was run.

You are also able to decide how long the automatically generated snapshot remains within the system until it expires (which can be helpful when you are creating snapshots on a very regular basis).

Adding a Trigger

Another way to further automatise this process is to attach a trigger to your schedule. What this means is that you can add an action (trigger) that you would like to be triggered when a report is generated. 

To do so, from the Manage Reports page click the Schedule Report button on the report you want to schedule. Then once you have created a schedule, click MORE next to the schedule you want to add a trigger to, and select the Add Trigger when report is generated option.

Then, under Triggered When, you can say that the action will be triggered when a snapshot is created. You will need to specify which scheduled report this applies to (or can set this trigger to apply to all reports).

 Once you have added the trigger details, you must add trigger actions. Which is where you can select the ation most useful to you. What do you want to happen when a scheduled snapshot has been created?

An example might be that every time a snapshot is created, an email is sent to line managers. This would allow you to keep track of report snapshots, so that you can regularly evaluate changes. This notification would then come up in your dashboard notifications.

Whatever action you choose, everytime this report is run and a snapshot is generated, this action will now be triggered to occur. You can attach as many actions to this as you require.