Chapter 136. Running Recurring Reports

Recurring reports are a useful way to save time by scheduling reports that you run on a regular basis, such as monthly circulation and monthly patron registration statistics. When you have set up a report to run on a monthly basis you’ll get an email informing you that the report has successfully run. You can click on a link in the email that will take you directly to the report output. You can also access the output through the reporter interface as described in Viewing Report Output.

To set up a monthly recurring report follow the procedure in Generating Reports from Templates but make the changes described below.

  1. Select the Recurring Report check-box and set the recurrence interval to 1 month.
  2. Do not select Run ASAP. Instead schedule the report to run early on the first day of the next month. Enter the date in YYYY-MM-DD format.
  3. Ensure there is an email address to receive completion emails. You will receive an email completion notice each month when the output is ready.
  4. Select a folder for the report’s output.
  5. Click Save Report.
  6. You will get a confirmation dialogue box that the Action Succeeded. Click OK.

You will get an email on the 1st of each month with a link to the report output. By clicking this link it will open the output in a web browser. It is still possible to login to the staff client and access the output in Output folder.

How to stop or make changes to an existing recurring report? Sometimes you may wish to stop or make changes to a recurring report, e.g. the recurrence interval, generation date, email address to receive completion email, output format/folder or even filter values (such as the number of days overdue). You will need to delete the current report from the report folder, then use the above procedure to set up a new recurring report with the desired changes. Please note that deleting a report also deletes all output associated with it.

Tip

Once you have been on Evergreen for a year, you could set up your recurring monthly reports to show comparative data from one year ago. To do this select relative dates of 1 month ago and 13 months ago.