Flex Data Hub – Scheduling and Sending Dashboards

Data Hub allows you to schedule specific reports to be delivered directly to your inbox. You can define how often you'd like to receive your data, as well as the file format, applied filters, and recipients.

In this article:

• Schedule a dashboard delivery ↓
  
  • Schedule Delivery – Settings tab ↓
  • Schedule Delivery – Filters tab ↓
  • Schedule Delivery – Advanced options tab ↓
• Schedules – Review, Edit, Duplicate, Delete ↓
• Important notes ↓
• Frequently Asked Questions ↓
  
  

Schedule a dashboard delivery

1. Go to Data Hub and open the dashboard you want to schedule.
2. Click the ︙ icon (1) and select Schedule Delivery (2).
   Note: If you don't see the Schedule delivery option, you don't have the required permissions. In that case, contact an administrator.
   
   
   
   
3. Depending on whether you already have existing schedules, one of the following dialogs will open: Schedules or Schedule Delivery. The Schedules dialog is explained at the end of this article. We'll proceed with Schedule Delivery, where you'll create your first delivery.

If you select New from the existing schedules dialog or do not have any pre-existing schedules for the dashboard, this dialog will appear with three tabs: Settings, Filters, and Advanced options. They are explained below.

Schedule Delivery – Settings tab

In the Settings tab, the following fields and menus are available:

1. Schedule Name – enter or edit the schedule's name. Note that it will be used for the email's subject line and as part of the filename if you choose to send the report as an email attachment.
2. Recurrence – customize the timing of your delivery. The Recurrence drop-down menu offers the following timing categories:
   • Send now – If you select Send now, the dashboard will be sent when you fill in the required fields and click Send now at the bottom of the dialog.
     • Time and date-based schedules – The following options are available:
       • Monthly
       • Weekly
       • Daily
       • Specific months
       • Specific days

3. Destination – here, e-mail is the only option. You can enter the required e-mails in the Email addresses field. If you're entering multiple email addresses, press the Enter key, or separate each address with a comma.

4. Format – the drop-down menu lets you choose from a list of available formats:

   • CSV zip file – The unformatted data from the dashboard is delivered as a collection of comma-separated values (CSV) files in a zipped directory. The ZIP file is delivered as an email attachment for deliveries to email.
   • PDF – An image of the dashboard as a single PDF file. The default layout displays tiles as they are arranged in the dashboard, but other layout and sizing options are available under Advanced options. For deliveries to email, the file is delivered as an email attachment.
   • PNG visualization – An image of the dashboard as a single PNG file. The default layout displays tiles as they are arranged in the dashboard, but other layout options are available under Advanced options. For deliveries to email, the image appears inline within the body of the email.
   Emailed deliveries should not exceed 20 MB (for formats delivered in the email body) and 15 MB (for formats delivered as attachments).

Test a schedule

If you set the Recurrence field to anything other than Send Now, a Test Now button appears at the bottom left of the Schedule Delivery dialog. Click it to send a one-time test email of the schedule only to yourself. A green checkmark appears to confirm a test has been sent.

Save a schedule or send it now

• If you set the Recurrence field to Send Now, click Send Now at the bottom of the dialog for a one-time delivery to the listed destination.
• If you set the Recurrence field to anything other than Send now, click Save to save your schedule and close the dialog
• Click Cancel to exit the dialog without saving or sending the schedule.
  
  

Schedule Delivery – Filters tab

The Filters tab shows any filters applied to the dashboard and their values. In this tab, you can edit the values for any existing filters applied to the dashboard, and the new values will be applied to the delivery. The dashboard itself will not be affected.

Important!

• You cannot add filters to your schedule in the Filters tab; only view and edit the values for existing dashboard filters.
• If a dashboard filter requires a filter value, you must enter a value in the Filters tab to create or save any edits to the delivery.
• Sometimes dashboard filters change after a schedule is created. The table below explains how that affects filters applied to the scheduled deliveries:

Note: Dashboard filters that are renamed in or removed from a dashboard are no longer applied to delivered data. Schedule creators should be aware that renaming or removing filters could cause deliveries to expose unfiltered data.

Schedule Delivery – Advanced options tab

The Advanced Options tab provides additional customization for your delivery. The options available depend on the file format you selected.

1. Custom message – Available only for the email destination. Enter a message (up to 1500 characters) you would like included in the body of emails to recipients.

2. Results – Available only for CSV and ZIP file formats. There are two options:

• With visualization options applied: Choose the "With visualizations" options applied option to apply some of the visualization settings from the dashboard tiles to your dashboard delivery. This causes the files in your delivery to appear similar to table charts. Any of the following settings in the Plot, Series, and Formatting menus that are configured for visualization will be applied to the data delivery:

• • Show Row Numbers
  • Hide Totals
  • Hide Row Totals
  • Limit Displayed Rows to a maximum of 500 rows shown or hidden
  • Show Full Field Name
  • Custom labels for each column

• As displayed in the data table: Choose the "As displayed in the data table" option to deliver the data as it appears in the data table of each dashboard tile's Expanded view.

3. Values – available only for CSV and ZIP file formats. There are two options: Formatted or Unformatted.

• Select Formatted if you want the data to appear similar to how it appears in the Explore experience in Data Hub, although some features (such as linking) aren't supported by all file types.
• Select Unformatted if you do not want to apply any special formatting of your query results, such as rounding long numbers or adding special characters, that your Data Hub developers may have put in place. This is often preferred when data is being fed into another tool for processing.

4. Expand tables to show all rows – Available only for PDF formats. Check the box to display all rows of any table visualizations in the dashboard (rather than just those rows that appear in the dashboard tile thumbnails).

If the option is enabled, dashboard tiles that contain table visualizations may look slightly different in delivered PDFs than they do inside Data Hub. The following differences may be noticeable in the PDF:

• Customizations to background colors and font sizes are removed from column headers and subtotal rows.
• Tables appear in the white theme.
• The sort icon does not appear on pivoted tables that were not manually sorted.
• Tables with Size Columns to Fit enabled stretch to the full width of the tile.

Additionally, for tables with more than 20,000 cells, the following differences may be noticeable in the PDF:

• Conditional formatting options other than Background color no longer appear.
• Cell visualizations on numeric columns no longer appear.

5. Arrange dashboard tiles in a single column – Available only in PDF and PNG file formats. This layout displays dashboard tiles in a single vertical column. Leave the box unchecked to show the tiles as they are arranged in the dashboard.

6. Paper size – Available only for dashboard deliveries in PDF format. From the drop-down menu, specify the optimal size and orientation of dashboard PDFs.

7. Table resolution – Available only for the PNG visualization format and when Arrange dashboard tiles in a single column is turned on.

You can customize the width of your visualization by using the Table resolution drop-down menu. Your width options are:

• Normal: 800 pixels
• Wide: 1680 pixels

Note: For deliveries to email, if you choose Wide and the visualization width exceeds the limit set by your email client, email delivery recipients may need to scroll horizontally to see the entire visualization.

8. Delivery time zone – Select the time zone from the drop-down menu. The time zone you select does not affect the data in your dashboard, just the timing of the delivery.

Note: Sometimes, a scheduled delivery may fail to reach one or more recipients. This could happen if the underlying model has an error, the recipient does not have access to the data, or if there are rendering problems or page errors. The data destination reports an error if it is unable to connect to the specified endpoint.

Data Hub sends an email to notify the schedule's creator if such issues occur. The email includes a link to the scheduled content, a list of the recipients it failed to reach, and more information, if available, about the problem Data Hub encountered when trying to reach the recipients.

Schedules – Review, Edit, Duplicate, Delete

If you have already created schedules for this dashboard, this dialog will appear, showing the schedules that you have set along with information about each schedule, such as destination and format.

Note: Deliveries that use the Send Now recurrence and schedules that were created by other people will not appear in this dialog.

You can perform the following functions in the Existing Schedules dialog:

• Click Send Now next to a schedule to send out an immediate delivery. This will not change the schedule's recurrence.
• Click the   icon to edit, duplicate, or delete a schedule.
  Note: You can only delete schedules created by you.
• Click New to open the Schedule Delivery dialog and create a new schedule or send a new delivery.
• Click Done to exit the dialog.

Important notes

Frequently Asked Questions

I'm getting an error message when trying to save my schedule

This most likely happens because one of your email recipients has never accessed the Data Hub, so they would be considered an external user. You can grant them access to Data Hub or set up a rule in your inbox to forward the deliveries to them.

The results are not what I was expecting

Please check the filters that are applied to your schedule.

I asked for yesterday's results; however, I'm still seeing data from the previous day

Our database is set in the Pacific Time Zone, so when making your schedules, remember that it considers which day it is in that time zone. For example, if you'd like to receive yesterday's results and you’re in London (GMT time zone), you can schedule your report to be delivered at 8 AM in the morning.

What if I want to receive a report on the last day of the month

You may have noticed that the Monthly option prompts you to select a specific day on which your dashboard would be delivered. If you select the 31st day of the month, it will not be delivered in months with only 30 days.

As a workaround, you can create three schedules using the Specific Months recurrence option: one for months with 30 days (April, June, September, and November), another for months with 31 days (January, March, May, July, August, October, and December), and then one for February.