Analytics lets you schedule periodic delivery of a user-defined dashboard, a Look’s visualization, or a Look’s data. You can send the information to email addresses, an Amazon S3 bucket, an SFTP server or a webhook .

• Types of Schedules
• Managing Schedules
• Scheduling Destinations
• Scheduling Dashboards
• Scheduling Looks
• Creating Alters with Scheduled Looks

Types of Schedules

There are several ways to time the delivery of your data. You can send data periodically, such as sending a certain dashboard every Monday. And, for Looks, you can create a schedule so that information is sent only if the data has changed since the last delivery, or if there are results for the query. Setting up delivery in this way is particularly interesting because you can schedule any new results for a Look’s query to be delivered as an alert. For example, your Look might have the query “orders over five days old that haven’t been shipped,” and you will receive an email alert only if there is an outstanding order that needs immediate attention.

You can also immediately send data directly from an Explore, Look, or dashboard with the same destination and formatting options that are available when scheduling data deliveries. This lets you send data right away, without setting up a schedule. In the case of an Explore, you can send a query immediately using all the destination and formatting options, without having to save the query to a dashboard or a Look. See the Sharing Data page for more information.

Managing Schedules

Each saved Look or dashboard can have multiple schedules, and each user of that data has their own set of schedules. If a user edits or deletes one of their schedules, only their recipients will be impacted; other users might have other schedules related to that data.

Scheduling Destinations

Analytics lets you choose several destination options for scheduling data delivery. The scheduling options are different for each type of delivery destination, so please click the link for the specific delivery destination you want:

• Email
• Amazon S3 bucket
• SFTP server
• Applications using a webhook

Scheduling Dashboards

There are several options to schedule a dashboard. To set-up a schedule start on a dashboard.

1. Click on the gear in the right upper corner of the dashboard.
2. Click on Schedule. If you haven't set up a schedule yet, Analytics will automatically create one for you. The title will be set to the name of the dashboard and default values will be set for all scheduling options. If you have one or more existing schedule, Analytics will display them on the left side and opens the top one for editing.
   • If you already have set some schedules, click on New + and enter the settings for that additional schedule.
3. Define a title, if you do not want to stay with the name of the dashboard.
4. Select the Destination. Most commonly it is Email, so you can choose the Recipients (multiple email addresses separated by commas) and add a text custom message.  But there are also options to
   • set-up a Webhook to a seperate service
   • reside results in a S3 bucket 
   • push directly to an SFTP server
5. Select the Format.
   • PDF (Tiled): Your dashboard in PDF format with all tiles arranged as in the dashboard.
   • PDF (Single Column): Your dashboard in PDF format with all tiles shown in a single vertical column.
   • Visualization (Tiled): The visualization of your dashboard in the body of the email (in a single PNG file showing tiles arranged as in the dashboard).
   • Visualization (Single Column): The visualization of your dashboard in the body of the email (in multiple PNG files showing the individual tiles in a single vertical column).
   • CSV Zip File: The unformatted data from your dashboard, delivered as a collection of comma-separated values (CSV) files in a zipped directory.
6. Customize the timing of your schedule in the Deliver this schedule section. 
   • The timing options change depending on whether you choose Daily, Weekly, Monthly, Hourly, or By minute. 
7. Set-up Filters. Analytics adhering the filters from the dashboard. You can also change filters directly in the schedule. You can set several schedules with different filter options, which lets you customize the results for each set of recipients.
8. Use Advanced options
   • Include a link. This link lets the email recipients further explore the data in Analytics.
   • Set the Timezone. The schedules can be from people in different timezone, Analytics allows you to also associate a timezone with a schedule. 
9. Click the Send Test button to send a one-time test. Analytics will send a test email to each email address listed in the Who should it be emailed to section.
10. Click Save All.

Scheduling Looks

Scheduling a Look is similar to schedule a Dashboard.  Start with a saved Look you want to schedule. In the menu on the right side, you can see if there is already a schedule associated with the Look. The menu looks very similar to the set-up for scheduling dashboards (explained in the section above), so the focus is set on the differences in the Advanced Options of the menu. 

1. Click on the gear in the right upper corner of the Look.
2. Click on Schedule. If you haven't set up a schedule yet, Analytics will automatically create one for you. The title will be set to the name of the dashboard and default values will be set for all scheduling options. If you have one or more existing schedule, Analytics will display them on the left side and opens the top one for editing.
   • If you already have set some schedules, click on New + and enter the settings for that additional schedule.
3. Choose the Format.
   • Data Table: The data table of your Look in the body of the email in HTML.
   • Text: The data table of your Look as a tab-delimited text file attachment.
   • CSV: The data table of your Look as a comma-separated text file attachment.
   • JSON — Simple: The data table of your Look as a JSON file attachment.
   • XSLX: The data table of your Look as an Excel file attachment.
   • HTML: The data table of your Look as an HTML file attachment.
   • Visualization: The visualization of your Look in the body of the email as an image.
4. Use Advanced options:
   • Result-based options: You can add conditions for when the data is delivered.
     • Send this schedule if: You can send the data only if there are results, only if there are no results, or in either case. With this option, you can receive emails only when the filters of your Look are met (or not met). For example, you can create filter conditions for situations you want to monitor, such as items that are below a certain amount in inventory, expenditures that are above a certain value, and so forth.
     • and results changed since last run: This option cuts down on unnecessary emails. Analytics sends an email only if the query results have changed since the last email was sent.
   • Limit Options: You can limit the size of your email to stay within your email server's message size limitations.
     • Results in Table: Data is sent with a 5,000 row limit. This is the only choice available for emails using the Data Table or Visualization format options.
     • All Results: If you are using the Text, CSV, JSON — Simple, XLSX, or HTML format options, you can send all of the rows of the results of a saved Look. This option ignores any limits set on a saved Look. There is, however, a total data limit of 15 MB so that email applications will accept the attachment.
   • Format Options: You can format the data values. That formatting can be applied to your data delivery, when sending a Look or a dashboard in CSV format.
     • Apply Visualization Options: For Looks and the CSV format of dashboards, you can configure whether you want the data delivery to use the same options as your visualization. Otherwise Analytics will format the data delivery like the data table in the Data section of the Look or Explore.
     • Formatted Data Values: Select formatted data values if you want the data to appear more similar to the Explore experience in Analytics, although some features (such as linking) aren't supported by all file types. If you do not want to apply any special formatting of your query results, such as rounding long numbers or adding special characters your Analytics developers may have put in place.
5. Click the Send Test button to send a one-time test. Analytics will send a test email to each email address listed in the Who should it be emailed to section.
6. Click Save All.

Creating Alters with Scheduled Looks

This section assumes that you already know how to schedule dashboards and Looks. Start with a saved Look such as the # of delayed shipments.

For this use case, let's say you are interested in tracking the percentage of delayed shipments. For that you first have to set the relevant filters by editing the Look. 

1. Set-up the Filter '% of Shipments delayed'
2. In this use case, you want to get a notification, when the percentage of delayed shipments is greater than or equal 4%. 
3. Click Run. 
4. Click on the gear to Save & Schedule the Look. The look needs to be saved before scheduling.
5. Define a title of the Look and select the space to save it. 
6. Click Save & View Look. Then the Look appears on the screen. 
7. Click on the gear in the right upper corner of the Look.
8. Follow the steps of 'Scheduling a Look' explained above.
9. Select Send if 'there are results' as an option.  The report will sent out, if the percentage of delayed shipments is greater than or equal to 4%. 
10. Click Save all.

Of course you can add several dimensions or measurements as filters. To only check the last 7 days for example, you can add a time dimension as a filter.