Overview

Report templates provides the definition of how to create report instances. For a description of templates vs instances see the "Report instances" documentation.

Report template list

To add a new report template, click the icon. To edit an existing template, click the template's name in the "Report templates" list.

Editing report template details

The template's name is used to visually reference the template. It is recommended that a unique name be used for each detector, but it is not required.

Use the Points list to select the points to include in the report. To add a point, select it from the list and click the icon. To delete an existing point, click the icon associated with the point.

Colour values can be an HTML-style hex, or any colour name in the HTML specification. For example, "#2468AC", "red", and "dodgerblue" are all valid values.

The Date range is used to determine what values to select for the report. The range can be relative or absolute. In most cases a relative range is appropriate. Relative date ranges can be either based upon "previous" data or "past" data. A past range includes the given time period ending now. A previous range also includes the given time period, but its end time is quantized to correspond to the period type. For example, if the period type is "Hour(s)" and number of periods is 1, and the report runs at 18:05, the time span that will be used is from 17:00 (inclusive) to 18:00 (exclusive). If the number of periods were, say, 3, the time span would be from 15:00 to 18:00. Similarly, "Month(s)" starts the time span at midnight on the first day of the previous month and ends it on the last day of the previous month (when the number of periods is 1). Other period types work the same. A week starts on Monday at midnight in accordance with ISO standards.

Report scheduling

Reports can be scheduled to run automatically. Use the Run every... selection to determine a simple time event upon which it should run, or define a cron pattern for more specific control. (See the "Cron patterns" documentation for more information.) Time events occur at the beginning of the given period. Weeks start on Monday in accordance with ISO standards. A Run delay can be applied if data expected on the report tends to be collected later than the absolute run time.

Scheduled reports for disabled users do not run.

Report emailing

Although reports cannot be explicitly shared with the system, the can be implicitly shared by creating a mailing list to which to send the generated report instance. The content of the email is the same as the "report chart" window opened from within the Report queue panel. To include the CSV export file with the email, check the Include tabular data box.

Select the Email recipients to which to send the report email. Recipients can be mailing lists, system users, or free-form email addresses. Click the icon to send a test message to the selected recipients.

Important: Report instances that are emailed are automatically deleted immediately after being sent.

Template management

To save a report template click the icon at the top right of the Report criteria panel. To delete an existing template, click the icon. To run a report template immediately, click the icon. Note that some report templates may include a great deal of information, and so may take a long time to run. As such, all reports are run asynchronously to user interface. When a the icon is clicked, the report instance will be added to the report queue where the user can monitor its progress. To make a copy of a report template, click the icon.