You can send dashboards and reports to targeted recipients according to a predefined schedule. This guide shows how to do this in the Schedule Report window.
What are the benefits of creating scheduled reports?
MSPbots offers a scheduled reporting feature that enables users to set specific conditions such as a specific time and schedule. Users can automatically receive the latest dashboard or report at the scheduled time. Depending on the mapping between email and company, users can display unfiltered data or company-specific data in the scheduled report.
Automating scheduled reports to be sent according to a preferred schedule helps MSPs become time-efficient by eliminating the need for manual report generation and distribution. Also, when reports are generated and sent at regular intervals, you ensure clients receive updates in a timely and predictable manner.
Prerequisites
- Dashboards for scheduled reporting need the company and mapped client names template slicers.
- You can set up dashboards and reports for all MSPbots apps, BI packages, and applicable integrations.
- Only users with admin permissions can create dashboards and reports. If you don't have enough permissions, please contact your administrator for help.
How to set up scheduled reports
Scheduled reports can be sent to a manually selected recipients list or to specific recipients on your clients list with varying report requirements. This section discusses when to use these options and how to configure the schedule for each.
Sending scheduled reports to recipients manually
You can configure scheduled reports to send to manually selected recipients. This method sends the dashboard as it is without slicers nor data filtering and may be used to send scheduled reports without customizations.
Follow these steps to send scheduled reports to selected recipients.
- Create a dashboard.
- Open the dashboard and click the Schedule Report button on the upper-right corner of the screen.
- Click the +New or +Create a new Schedule button in the Schedule Report section.
- When the New Schedule section opens, enter a Schedule Name and set the Frequency of the report you are creating. The recipient's name is the default Schedule Name when the field is blank.
- Enter or select the recipient's email address in the To field and select an address from the From dropdown list.
- Next, enter a custom subject and type a message body. Then choose an Attachment option for your report and click Save.
If Invalid Token Detected popup appears, refer to Invalid Token Detected.
Sending filtered reports to your clients
If you need to send custom or filtered reports to specific clients based on a schedule, then you can use the Automated Contact List which allows you to send separate customized reports to different clients, including those with different names associated to their company name.
How to send reports using the Automated Contact List
- Create a dashboard.
- Configure client mapping and add the Company and Mapped client names slicers to your dashboard. You can refer to How to Filter Data for a Specific Client in Dashboards for instructions.
For more information on the Company and Mapped client names slicers, read the article Template Slicers in the MSPbots App.
You can apply only one (1) company slicer to a dashboard, report, and scorecard. - Open the dashboard and click the Schedule Report button on the upper-right corner of the screen.
- On the New Schedule Screen, enable the Automated Contact List switch.
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Next, select a widget from the Contact List dropdown menu. Choose a custom widget or select from the templates.
Selecting a contact list widget will display the total number of contacts in the widget, indicating how many times this report will be sent. For example, "60 contacts in the list" means that 60 reports will be generated and sent to the corresponding 60 recipients for each schedule.
If you don't have a contact list widget for your report yet, refer to How to Create a Contact List Widget for instructions.
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After you've selected a widget, click the Edit icon to open the Widget Builder and further customize the widget's settings and conditions.
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Next, go to the To field and select one or more tokens. This selection will send the report to the email addresses that meet the conditions set in the widget in Step 6.
If you want to send the report to the individuals in the Default Email column of the Contact List widget then send a copy to abc@mspbots.ai and a blind copy to an internal recipient like def@mspbots.ai. For example, select Default Email in the To field, then type abc@mspbots.ai in the CC field and def@mspbots.ai in the BCC field.
- Select Company Name from the Contact Company Name dropdown menu. This will filter the widget's data according to the recipient's company.
- Customize the subject to include the company name. To customize your email's subject automatically per recipient, click the token icon and select {{Company Name}}.
- Next, type your message and add a custom greeting. To customize your greeting automatically per recipient, click the token icon for the message and select {{Full Name}}.
- To send the report in a customized PDF attachment, scroll down to the Attachment section and select the Include PDF attachment checkbox. Selecting the {{Company Name}} token in Step 10 will automatically add the company name to the report's filename.
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Click Save when done. Your report will be sent to the recipients based on the widget settings and the specified schedule. Below is an example of an email sent to a recipient in the Automated Contact List. Notice how the token selection customized the email subject, message, and attached report.
If Invalid Token Detected popup appears, refer to Invalid Token Detected.
How to Create a Contact List Widget
The following example involves sending a report to the decision-makers in a company using ConnectWise Manage. For the creation process, see Creating a Grid Widget.
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Navigate to Widgets on the MSPbots app menu and click New Widget.
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Choose the Grid widget type on the New Widget window.
- When the Widget Builder window opens, go to the Basic Setting tab. Provide name, description, role, and tag, then click Apply.
Don't forget to add Contact List in the Tag option so that the widget will appear in the Contact List list of Schedule Report.
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For Dataset
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Go to Dataset on the Widget Builder. Click the Add button, then select New Layer to open the Dataset window.
- Select ConnectWise Manage / ConnectWise Manage Contact Data from the Dataset dropdown menu.
- Under Columns Display, add columns for full_name, default_email, contact_type, and company_name as shown below.
- Then go to the Filter section and add a condition with the parameters contact_type > Equals > Decision Maker.
- Click Save when done.
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Go to Dataset on the Widget Builder. Click the Add button, then select New Layer to open the Dataset window.
- To modify the settings in the Config tab, you can see Creating a Grid Widget for instructions.
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Click Apply to keep the settings.
The image below is an example of the contact list that applies the filters.
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How to share a filtered dashboard using PSA association
The PSA feature lets you share company-specific data using your company's PSA. To share a filtered dashboard:
- Follow the steps for How to set up a scheduled report.
- In Step 6, select the option Send filtered dashboard for the associated company of each recipient.
- Complete the steps as described and save.
The PSA feature will only work if the following prerequisites are satisfied:
- The user utilizes Autotask, ConnectWise, Kaseya, Syncro, or Halo for ticket handling.
- The field for company_name, account_name, or name is added to the columns display for the Dataset of the dashboard slicer.
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The client has a mapping relationship between the email and company or account name using the datasets below. MSPbots uses this mapping to sync the data from the client's PSA account.
- Dataset for Connectwise: ConnectWise Manage Contacts - API
- Dataset for Autotask: Autotask Contacts - API
- Dataset for Kaseya: Kaseya BMS Contacts Emails - API
- Dataset for Syncro: Syncromsp Contacts - API
- Dataset for Halo: Halo Users - API
The Scheduled Report feature will not send a report to the email addresses if the company is not mapped in the dataset.
- Dataset for Connectwise: ConnectWise Manage Contacts - API
- In the dashboard slicer's Widget Builder window, the user must input the word “Company” (case-sensitive) in the QueryParams field under the config tab.