BCA - Subscribing to a Report Using Email
About
This article covers how to subscribe to a report so that it's delivered to your email on a regular schedule.
Subscribing to a Report
To create an email subscription to a report:
1. Log into BLUEcloud Analytics (BCA).
2. Click the report you want to subscribe to, e.g. I want to subscribe to the report Circulation Statistics - MONTHLY, (BCA MTSC > Shared Reports > Circulation Statistics > Circulation Statistics - MONTHLY).
3. Answer the prompt(s) as needed.
4. Click Run Report at the bottom of the page.
5. Once the report results display, you can customize the report as you like.
For more information on how to customize a report, see BCA - Customizing Reports.
6. Click the drop-down arrow next to Report Home.
7. Select Subscribe to > Email... A dialogue box will open.
8. Update the name of the subscription to be more informative than the default, which is the report name and time you ran it. These subscription names appear on your My Subscriptions page, so do your future self a favor and make it clear what the report is at a glance.
For example, the default name for this subscription is "Circulation Statistics - MONTHLY 11/23/21 10:11:26 AM"; I renamed it to Circulation Statistics - MONTHLY by Item Cat1 (created 11/23/21) to reflect some customization and let me know how long I've had the subscription.
9. Schedule the date and time you want to receive the report in your inbox, making sure the time is equivalent to (or later than) 9:00AM MST, e.g. 2nd Day of the Month (11:00AM) EST. Selecting a time of 9:00AM MST or later ensures that your report won't run before the daily data refresh.
The MSC's instance of BCA is hosted on a shared server, which is why there are so many options in the Schedule drop-down in a variety of time zones. If you can't find the schedule you want, please open a ticket so a system administrator can request it from SirsiDynix
10. Select who you want to receive the report from the drop-down -- depending on how you added contacts in your BCA preferences, you may see individuals' names or the names of positions/departments, e.g. Technical Services. You can send the report to one recipient or multiple.
If your contact doesn't appear in the drop-down, you can add it by clicking the To: button.
Enter the contact’s name (or position) and email address, then click Add to Recipients.
The contact will now appear in the To: field. Once you're done adding contacts, click OK.
For more information on adding email contacts to your BCA account, see BCA - Getting Started.
11. Leave the Send drop-down as Data in email.
12. Choose your delivery format:
- HTML - report displays in the body of the email.
- PDF - report attached as a PDF.
- Excel - report attached as an Excel spreadsheet.
- Plain Text - report attached as plain text (.txt) file.
- CSV - report attached as a comma delimited (.csv) file.
13. Update the File Name of the email attachment to be more informative than the default (recommended). This is what the filename will be when your recipient first downloads it. For useful shortcut suggestions, hover over the info icon (letter 'i') next to the field. For example, if I want to see the date the report ran in the filename, I can enter it as Circulation Statistics - %%Date%% MONTHLY by Item Cat1.
14. Update the Subject line of the email to be more informative than the default (recommended), like you did for the filename above, e.g. Circulation Statistics - %%Date%% MONTHLY by Item Cat1.
15. In the Message (body of the email) field, make sure to let the recipient know who to contact if there's an error, e.g. "Monthly statistic subscription from BLUEcloud Analytics. For errors, open a ticket with the Montana Shared Catalog. Sincerely, Keiley McGregor".
16. Check Send a preview now if you'd like the recipient to see what the email and report will look like once you save the subscription. It may take several minutes for the preview to arrive in their inbox.
17. For Advanced Options - compressing the file or setting up an end date for the subscription - click the plus sign (+) to the left of Advanced Options.
If you checked the box to Compress contents (across from Delivery Format), you'll have the ability to password-protect your zip file and rename it if you want.
If you'd like to end the subscription after a certain date, you can indicate that by checking Do not deliver after and using the calendar widget to select the end date.
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