To schedule a report, follow these steps:
Note: There are three reports you will find the most useful when you are getting started. See What Reports Should You Begin With? for details.
Caution: Make sure that you have dedicated time to complete the procedure below before you begin. The Reports screen times out after 30 minutes of inactivity, so if you stop in the middle of the task and try to return to it, you'll have to start over.
- Click
in the left sidebar menu.
The Reports screen will appear and list all the available reports alphabetically.
- Locate the tile of the report you want to schedule, such as Devices Basic Report.
Note: To find it, you can scroll down or type part of its name in the Search Reports bar, such as "device." After you type a few characters, the list will be limited to only reports that match your search criteria. - On the tile of the report you want to schedule, click
at the top right and select Schedule Report on the menu that appears.
The Schedule screen for the report will appear and display the schedules that have been previously set up for it (if any).
- Click Create Schedule at the top left.
The New Schedule options will appear.
- If you want the schedule to begin today, you can leave the default Start Date selection of Immediately.
- If you want the schedule to start at a later date, follow these steps:
- Under Start Date, click On Specific Date.
- Click the calendar picker.
A calendar will appear, and today's date will be highlighted.
- Select the date for the schedule to begin.
- Use the Hour, Minute, and Second sliders to specify the time of day for the report to run.
Note: The Hour slider uses a 24-hour clock, also called military time. - Click Close.
- Under Start Date, click On Specific Date.
- Click the Time Zone drop-down arrow and specify your time zone.
- Click the Recurrence Type drop-down arrow to set how often and when you would like your scheduled report to run.
Note: Alternatively, you can leave the default selection of None if you want to schedule the report to run only once. - For basic recurrence options based off the start date you set, select Simple in the Recurrence Type drop-down list and follow these steps:
- Click the Repeat Every drop-down arrow and specify the repetition time frame (hours, days, or weeks).
- Select the 1 before that drop-down list and type the skip time value.
Note: For example, to have the report run every other Monday (given a start date that falls on a Monday), select Weeks in the drop-down list and enter 2 for the value — so it will repeat every 2 weeks. (To just have it run once a week, select Weeks and type 1.) - Select a radio button under End Date, given these options:
- Run a Set Number of Times: To schedule the report to run only a certain number of times (and then never run again). After selecting this, type the count in the Number of Runs field.
- Run Until a Specified Date: To schedule the report to run only up to a particular date (and then never run again). After selecting this, use the calendar picker to set an end date and time (and click Close in the calendar picker).
- Run Indefinitely: To schedule the report to run forever (or until such time as you change its end date).
- Run a Set Number of Times: To schedule the report to run only a certain number of times (and then never run again). After selecting this, type the count in the Number of Runs field.
- Holidays is likely to be grayed out (as calendars aren't added to your account by default), so you can ignore this option.
- Click the Repeat Every drop-down arrow and specify the repetition time frame (hours, days, or weeks).
- For more specific recurrence options that enable you to choose months, days, and times, select Calendar in the Recurrence Type drop-down list and follow these steps:
- Under Months, you can leave the default selection of Every Month for a scheduled report that will be run throughout the year.
Alternatively, you can click Selected Months and select only specific months. (Press Ctrl before clicking the month names to choose multiple months.)
- Under Days, leave Every Day selected if you want the report to run every day of the week.
If you want to specify the days it is to run, click Selected Days and select those days. (Again, press Ctrl before clicking the day names to choose multiple days.)
Alternatively, you can click Dates in Month to have the report repeated only on certain days (such as the 15th and 30th of each month). (Separate different dates with commas or date ranges with hyphens, such as "15, 30" or "5-7.")
- Under Times, select the 0 under Hours and type the hour value (using military time) for the time of day you want the report to run; for example, enter 15 if you want the report to run at 3:30 p.m.
- Select the 0 under Minutes and type the minute value for the time you want the report to run; for example, enter 30 if you want the report to run at 3:30 p.m.
- Under Schedule End, you can optionally click the End Date calendar picker, set an end date and time, and click Close in the calendar picker. If you don't specify an end date, the report will run indefinitely.
- Holidays is likely to be grayed out (as calendars aren't added to your account by default), so you can ignore this option.
- Under Months, you can leave the default selection of Every Month for a scheduled report that will be run throughout the year.
- At the top right of the screen, click the Parameters tab.
The options for running the report will appear, such as Account Name, Part Number, App ID, ESN, and FW (firmware) Version.
- Specify all the report parameters you need. (See Running a Report for details.)
- When you specify the Last ID Report Time option, choose a time frame from the drop-down list, such as Today, Yesterday, Last 7 Days, Last 30 Days, or Last Month.
Note: Don't enter specific dates such as 10/22 to 10/29. (If you were to do so, the scheduled report would always return the same days' information, which wouldn't be overly useful.) - After you specify all the report options you want, click the Output Options tab at the top right of the screen.
- You can leave the default filename assigned to the report, or you can select the text under File Name (Required) and type a new, more personalized name (perhaps beginning with "Scheduled").
Caution: You can't include spaces in the filename, which is why the default name uses underscores. - Click in the Description field and type text that offers a quick explanation of when the report is scheduled to run, such as "Devices Basic, run for the Last 7 Days every Friday."
- Click the Time Zone drop-down arrow and specify the time zone you want to use for when the report is sent out.
- Click the Output Locale drop-down arrow and select the language (based on destination) you want the report to be sent out in.
Note: You can leave this at (Default) to have CTC Admin's default language setting be used. - If you want the report to be sent as a PDF, you can leave the Formats selection as is; otherwise, you can select other output types, such as CSV (for a comma-separated value file), Excel (Paginated), or Excel (and remove the check mark for any type you don't want).
Note: You can select multiple formats as well.
The File Handling options determine what will happen when the system has an existing report with the same filename (such as on later runs of the scheduled report).
- You can leave Overwrite Files selected if you want previous versions of the report to be copied over (deleted and replaced).
- If instead you want all copies of the file to be saved, select Sequential File Names by Timestamp, which will use your specified filename but include the date and time when it was run.
You can use the timestamp format already specified (yyyyMMddHHmm), or you can select that text and type a new one.
Note: yyyyMMddHHmm means that the year value will have four characters; the month will have two; and the day, hour, and minute will also have two — such as 202307241500 for July 24, 2023 at 3:00 p.m.
The Output Destination options enable you to send the report runs to an FTP server.
- If you don't want to do so, you can leave those settings blank. If you do want to output to FTP, follow these steps:
- Click Output to FTP Server.
- Type the address in the Server Address field.
- In the Port field, specify the port number to use.
- Click the Transfer Protocol drop-down arrow and select the protocol type.
- Type the physical path to the folder in which to store the files in the Directory field.
- If a username and password are required, type those in their fields.
- Click Test Connection to make sure that CTC Admin can successfully connect to the FTP server.
- Click Output to FTP Server.
- At the top right of the screen, click the Notifications tab.
- If you don't want the report to be emailed to anyone when it is run, you can leave these settings blank and skip down to step 30.
- Otherwise, in the To field, type (or copy and paste) all the email addresses you'd like the scheduled report to be sent to, making sure to separate each address with a comma.
- Optionally, you can repeat step 25 for the CC and BCC fields (for recipients you'd like to be carbon copied and blind carbon copied).
- Type the message subject in the Subject field, such as "Scheduled Devices Basic."
- In the Message box, type the body of your email, perhaps using the description you entered on the Output Options tab (such as "Devices Basic report, run for the Last 7 Days every Friday").
- Select from these options for including the report in the email:
- Include Reports As Repository Links in Email Body: Places links in the message that the recipient can click to view the report.
- Include Report Files As Attachments: Attaches the scheduled report to the email (using the file formats you selected).
- Include Report Files As ZIP Attachment: Attaches the scheduled report to the email as a zip file.
- Include HTML Report in Email Body: Puts the report in the message body, using the HTML format.
Note: If this option is grayed out, it is not available yet for the current version of CTC Admin. - Do Not Send Emails for Empty Reports: Prevents the email from being sent out if this particular run didn't include any results.
- Include Reports As Repository Links in Email Body: Places links in the message that the recipient can click to view the report.
- Click Save at the bottom of the screen.
The Save dialog box will appear.
- In the Scheduled Job Name field, type a name for the report that will appear on the Schedule screen (such as the filename you specified earlier — but you can include spaces here).
- In the Scheduled Job Description box, type the description you included earlier for the report.
- Click Save.
The Schedule screen for the report will appear and include your schedule in the list.
See Viewing Scheduled Reports for a description of the column headers and grid icons.
Caution: Don't be alarmed if the Next Run time value seems off; the report will be run for the time you specified but might be listed here using UTC (coordinated universal time) instead of your time zone. (Of course, Last Run won't be populated yet for a newly scheduled report.) - You can view the Schedule screen for this report at any time by performing steps 1 through 3 in this procedure (if the same account is selected in the Account Switcher).
Note: For more details, go to Viewing Scheduled Reports.