How to: Create, schedule and run report templates

Reports are often run on an ad hoc basis, as and when you need the information. To create a report, you need to define the type of report, the reporting period, the users to be included in the report, the content to report on, and what user profile data to include. Making these selections can be a time consuming process and will need to be repeated every time you run the same report.

To save time and effort, you can define the requirements for a report once, and then save the definition as a report template. Once you've defined a report template, you can run the template at any time, or schedule the report template to run automatically.

To create a report template

There are two ways to create a report template from the Civica Learning Administration portal:

On the Reports generator page:

1. Log in to your Administration portal.
2. On the NAVIGATION pane, click Reports.
3. In the SECTIONS section, click Report generator.
4. On the Report generator page, once you have defined your reporting requirements, click Save as template.
5. In the Save as template dialog box, in the NAME box, enter a template name, and optionally, in the DESCRIPTION box, enter a template description.
6. In the Save as template dialog box, click one of the following options:
   • Save, to save the template, or
   • Save and run, to save the template and also run the report immediately, or
   • Cancel, to go back to the Report generator page

On the Reports templates page:

1. Log in to your Administration portal.
2. On the NAVIGATION pane, click Reports.
3. In the SECTIONS section, click Report templates.
4. In the ACTIONS section, click Add report template.
5. On the Add new report template page, define your template NAME, DESCRIPTION (optional) and reporting requirements, and then click Save.

To schedule a report template

You can specify that a report template be run on either an as-required basis (Ad hoc), or at specific intervals (Scheduled).

1. Log in to your Administration portal.
2. On the NAVIGATION pane, click Reports.
3. In the SECTIONS section, click Report templates.
4. In the ACTIONS section, click Add report template.
5. On the Add new report template page, in the TEMPLATE SCHEDULE section, in the Ad hoc drop-down list, click Scheduled.
6. In the FREQUENCY drop-down list, click a frequency to determine how often to run the report:
   • Daily.
   • Weekly. Specify the day of the week.
   • Monthly. Specify the day of the month.
7. Optionally specify a date range for the data included in the report. By default (as shown above), the date range for the scheduled report is the period over which the report runs (with DATE RANGE set to Use reporting interval), for example, activity over the last week in a weekly report.
   
   However, you can set the date range so that data from a specific date is included in the report. To do so, in the DATE RANGE drop-down list, click Define from date, as shown here:

The ability to set a specific date range enable you for example, to run a weekly report that includes all activity since the start of the year, rather than just activity in the reporting period.

Reports run at the start of the day specified, so typically, weekly reports are run on Mondays, so that the information includes data for the specified reporting period, up until the Sunday evening. Monthly reports run on the 1st of the month, to include information from the specified period, up until the evening on the last day of the previous month.

INFO: When performing a Save as template from the Report generator page, the template can only be saved as an Ad hoc template. If you would like to configure the template as a Scheduled template, you must edit the template by using the Report templates page.

To run a report from a report template

1. Log in to your Administration portal.
2. On the NAVIGATION pane, click Reports.
3. In the SECTIONS section, click Report templates.
4. On the Report templates page, locate the template you want to generate report data from, and then click the Run button to the right of the report template.
5. In the Run report template? dialog box, click Run.

INFO: The Run button to the right of the report template is only available for ad hoc report templates and not scheduled templates.

 To edit a report template

1. Log in to your Administration portal.
2. On the NAVIGATION pane, click Reports.
3. In the SECTIONS section, click Report templates.
4. On the Report templates page, click the template you want to alter.
5. On the Edit report template page, update the template as required, and then click Save.

INFO: A report template is owned by the user that created it. Global Administrators can view all report templates owned by any user including other Global Administrators and Reporters. Reporters can only view the report templates that they own (i.e. those they created).

To delete a report template

1. Log in to your Administration portal.
2. On the NAVIGATION pane, click Reports.
3. In the SECTIONS section, click Report templates.
4. On the Report templates page, click the template you want to delete.
5. In the ACTIONS section, click Delete report template.
6. In the Delete report template? dialog box, click Delete.