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LESSON LIST
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5:29Reporting Interface
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4:00Report Data Tab
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4:38Report Design Tab
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5:04Report Schedule Tab
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Supplemental Videos
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4:34Simple Report
LESSON
Report Schedule Tab
Description
The Reporting module features a Schedule tab for running a report on a schedule. This lesson examines how to create a scheduled report.
Video recorded using: Ignition 8.0
Transcript
(open in window)[00:00] In this lesson, we'll take a look at the schedule tab in the reporting module. So, when you're creating a report, and you're in the schedule section here, You have a bunch of tools that allow you to generate the report automatically. Now, in this case, creating a schedule means that you want to generate a separate document, such as a PDF or a CSV, and then distribute it somehow. Each report can have multiple schedules. Adding a schedule involves hitting the little plus button that's in the upper right hand corner here. And then we'll list all of the available schedules for this one report. Of course, you can have multiple, as I mentioned earlier. If you need to remove a schedule, simply hit the little trash can icon. It will delete whatever schedule you had selected. Now, when you have a schedule selected, you'll see that this second set of tabs down below will become enabled. The settings you make down here only apply to whatever schedule you have selected up above. So if I change the time down here, for example, you can see that the schedule that I've selected now has the new time. This means that the tabs down below will change the settings for whichever schedule we have selected in this top table. Now, looking at this lower set of tabs, the schedule tab allows you to determine when this schedule should execute. The schedule uses notation similar to crontab. If you're unfamiliar with what that is, don't worry about it. We have these drop downs here to fill in the notation for you. Additionally, you saw me click on it already, there's a common settings at the top to kind of get you started. I wanted to mention this little enable checkbox down here. This checkbox allows you to disable a schedule. This means the report is still around, just the one schedule you have selected won't automatically execute. Now, let's head over to the parameters tab. For every parameter you have on your report, you'll see it listed over here. Now you see I only have the default parameters. I haven't made any other changes to this report. But if I did add some extra parameters, you'd see them down below. So for example, if I head back to the data tab, and I just add a new parameter, without making any other changes, if I go to the schedule tab, you can see that the new parameter now exists. With a schedule, parameters use their default value, unless you opt out with the little default checkbox here. Doing so allows you to write an expression to override the value on the parameter, but just for this one schedule. Now, in some cases, you may want multiple instances of the same schedule to run, but with different parameter values. That's simply just creating separate schedules, each with their own parameter configuration. So instead of trying to configure one of your parameters to have a range of values, you would instead configure one schedule, and then right click on the schedule, to copy and then paste, then edit the newly created schedule. Heading back down to the tabs at the bottom, the last tab is the actions tab. This is where we determine what do we want to do on the schedule. If you hit the little plus button down here, you'll see that there's a list of actions available. For right now, I'll take a look at the save file action, and you'll see it appear it in the list. Each schedule can have multiple actions, including the same type of action. So I could add another save file action here. For each of your actions, you generally have the option to specify a file format for the report. Now, if I head back to the action list here, talking about the rest of the buttons, the trash can is familiar and allows you to remove whatever action you have selected here. That middle button there allows you to run the action immediately. This is perfect for testing. So if I were to press this button now, I can take a look at my C drive, there should be a folder called Path, another folder called ToFolder, and it should actually have the name of my report, as well as the current time. So if we take a look at that right now, here in my C drive, I have Path, ToFolder, and there's my report. Now, of course if we wanted to change the name, we could also just change the notation down here. So for example, I could put in the minutes. Now if we try executing this again, we can take a look back, and should see that there's a separate report now showing the minute. Now, there's a lot more going on with all these actions here, which is why we'll talk about them more in depth in later videos. Now, the last thing I wanted to mention was this folder Path. This is relative to the Gateway, so this Path is relative to wherever Ignition is installed. And again, this is because reports are generated on the Gateway. So again, we're aware reports are run on the Gateway. If I head back to the first scheduling tab down here, the time you specify for the schedule is relative to the Gateway system clock. So you want to be careful when setting up schedules. Make sure you're paying attention to the system clock on the Gateway.