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Hitachi Vantara Lumada and Pentaho Documentation

Schedule Reports

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Overview

Use the Schedules perspective to schedule your reports to run at regular intervals.

You can use the Schedules page of the User Console to schedule a report to run at regular intervals, on certain dates and times, and with different parameters. You can also set a scheduled report to be emailed automatically, if your system administrator has configured the server for emailing reports. After you schedule a report, you can pause or delete a schedule, as well as edit the schedule to change the frequency of the report, parameters, or email settings.

The system administrator may set up times when you cannot run a scheduled report, for example, to perform system maintenance, or to minimize scheduling during peak times. If any blocked out times are set up, you can view these times so you can choose an alternate schedule.

Schedule a Report

You can create a schedule and designate the frequency of the scheduled report, report parameters, and email settings.

  1. Login to the User Console, and click Browse Files to browse to the location of your report.
  2. Double-click the folder containing your report in the Browsing pane on the left, then click to select the report you want to schedule from the middle pane. The File Actions pane on the right of the Browse Files window populates with a list of actions that you can do with the selected report.
  3. Select Schedule from the File Actions pane. The New Schedule window appears.
  4. Enter a name for the schedule in the Schedule Name field. If no name is entered in the Schedule Name field, the default is the name of the report file.
  5. Choose a time interval for the report from the Recurrence list. To enter a custom time interval, choose Cron and consult the Quartz reference to learn the Quartz Cron syntax. If blockout times have been scheduled by your administrator, a View Blockout Times button appears on the bottom of the New Schedule window. A list of blockout times is viewable by clicking View Blockout Times.
  6. Choose a Start Time and a Recurrence Pattern, as well as Start and End Dates for the report. Click Next.
  7. Choose what type of file you would like the schedule to create from the Parameters field. Click Next. The email option will only appear if your system administrator has enabled email on the server.
    1. If you do not want to email a copy of the report, choose No.
    2. If you want to email a copy of the report, choose Yes. Type to fill in or edit the fields that appear.
  8. Click OK.

The schedule is created and appears in the list in the Schedules window of the console.

Edit a Schedule

You can edit a schedule to change the frequency of the scheduled report, report parameters, and email settings.

  1. Click the Home drop-down menu on the upper-left and click the link to the Schedules. The list of schedules appears in the Schedules page.
  2. Click the schedule you want to edit in the list, then click Edit in the scheduling toolbar. The Edit Schedule window appears.
  3. Type to rename the schedule in the Schedule Name field.
  4. Choose a new time interval for the report from the Recurrence list.
  5. Choose a new Start Time and Recurrence Pattern, as well as new Start and End Dates for the schedule. Click Next. If blockout times have been scheduled by your administrator, a View Blockout Times button appears on the bottom of the New Schedule window. A list of blockout times is viewable by clicking View Blockout Times.
  6. Choose what type of file you would like the schedule to create from the Parameters field. Click Next. The email option will only appear if your system administrator has enabled email on the server.
    1. If you do not want to email a copy of the report, choose No.
    1. If you want to email a copy of the report, choose Yes. Type to fill in or edit the fields that appear.
  7. Click OK.

The schedule is edited and appears in the list in the Schedules window of the console.

Delete a Schedule

After you have scheduled a report, you can easily delete the schedule without deleting the report.

  1. Click the Home drop-down menu on the upper-left and click the link to Schedules. The list of schedules appears in the Schedules page.
  2. Click the schedule that you want to delete in the list. The schedule is highlighted.
  3. Click Delete in the upper right of the toolbar to delete the highlighted schedule. This deletes the schedule while leaving the report intact.

The previously scheduled report no longer runs at the specified interval.

Manage Schedules

As an administrator, you may create, run, delete, stop, edit, or resume schedules through the Schedules page in the User Console. After a report is scheduled by any user, an admin may edit, pause, or delete that schedule, as well as change the frequency of the report, change parameters, or adjust email settings. To distribute reports using email, make sure you have configured the email server. You also have the ability to prevent users from scheduling specific files or reports.

You might need to control when schedules can run, by setting up periods of time to forbid schedules. This allows you to perform administrative functions, such as system maintenance or managing server traffic during peak usage times.

Prevent Scheduling of a Single Report or File

All new reports are enabled for scheduling by default, but as an administrator, you can control which files can be scheduled to run.

  1. From the User Console Home menu, click Browse Files. The Browse Files page appears.
  2. Browse to the location of a report from the Browse pane on the left of the Browse Files page. The Files pane in the center populates with a list of reports.
  3. Click to select the report for which you want to deny scheduling, then click Properties in the Folder Actions pane. The Properties window for that report appears.
  4. Click the General tab in the Properties window, then disable the box next to Allow Scheduling.
  5. Click OK.
Users are no longer able to see the Schedule option next to this report and the report is not able to be scheduled.

Prevent Scheduling by Setting Blockout Times

Specific times can be designated on the server to block the running of schedules. This allows you to perform administrative functions such as system maintenance or managing server traffic during peak usage times.

  1. From the User Console Home menu, click Schedules. The Schedules page appears.
    File:/ssBaservBlockoutTimesControls.png
  2. Click the Create Blockout Time button or the green + in the Blockout Times widget on the left side of the Schedules screen. The Blockout Time dialog box appears.
    File:/ssBaservNewSchedBlockTime.png
  3. Choose a Recurrence, Start Time, Duration or End Time, and a Start Date for the blocked out time using the available fields.
  4. Click OK. If Run Once is chosen as the Recurrence, a dash shows under the Start Times and End Time fields in the blockout list, until the blockout time passes.

The Blockout Time is created and no schedules will run on the Pentaho Server during that time. Users are able to view a list of blocked out times when they are creating schedules.

Schedule Deletion of Generated Files

As an administrator, you may want to delete older generated files or content in order to free up space in the Pentaho Repository.

File:/ssBaservSettings.png
  1. Click on Administration in the drop-down menu on the upper right, then click on Settings. The Settings interface appears.
  2. To manually delete generated files now, confirm the age of the files to be deleted, then press Delete Now. The generated files older than the specified age are deleted.
  3. To schedule regular deletion of generated files, press Schedule Deletion. The Schedule Deletion window appears.
  4. Enter an age for the generated files in the field specifying number of days.
  5. Choose a time interval for the schedule from the Recurrence list.
  6. Choose a Start Time and a Recurrence Pattern, as well as Start and End Dates for the scheduled deletion. Click OK.

The Deletion Schedule is created and the generated files older than the specified age are deleted during the scheduled times.

Set Up Emails for Scheduled Reports

A convenient way to share reports is to specify an email server to be used by the Pentaho Server to send these reports to recipients. This feature works with the report scheduling feature to automate the process of emailing reports to your user community. Having an email server is not required to configure the Pentaho Server. If you want to get started quickly or do not have information about your email server, skip this for now. You can always come back to it later.

About the Mail Server Page

You use the Administration page within the Pentaho User Console and access Mail Server to set up the e-mail server, as shown in the following example steps:

  1. Log on to PUC, click Administration in the upper-right corner, then click Mail Server from the items on the left. The Mail Server page appears.

  1. Enter your email server settings.
Setting Description
Host Name (SMTP) Address of your SMTP email server for sending email.
Port Port of your SMTP email server, usually 25. For Gmail, the value is 587.
Use Authentication Enable to use authentication for email.
User Name User ID to connect to the email server for sending email.
Password Password used to connect to the email server.
Server Type Transport for accessing the email server, usually SMTP. For Gmail, SMTP is required.
Email "From" Name Name that appears in the From field in an email. If left blank, the default email name for this field is Pentaho Scheduler.
Email "From" Address Address that appears in the From field in an email. If left blank, the default email address for this field is Pentaho Scheduler.
Use Start TLS Enable if the email server requires a Start TLS connection.
Use SSL Enable if the email server requires an SSL connection. This value must be enabled for Gmail.
  1. Click Test Email Configuration, then click Save. A success message appears.