Whitepaper: Scheduled Events

March 28, 2019 General,Whitepapers,

Previously in TimeTrak 4.0, when viewing a report, this was required to be generated manually.

It is common that users are running reports on a recurring basis some examples of these are:

  • Payroll Reports
  • Productivity Reports
  • Stock level reports
  • Client Task Summary Reports (for large clients)
  • Job Billing Summaries (for large clients)

In TimeTrak 19.1, Scheduled Events is a new feature where a report can be set to generate automatically and send via an e-mail on a scheduled basis meaning users are no longer required to manually run the report(s) (or remember to run the report as these can be delivered to their email address on a scheduled basis.

How to set up Scheduled Events in TimeTrak

1 / Create a new template specifically for Report Scheduler (scheduled events).

2 / Set the Subject of the email and the From Email address. This can be the admin email address (this refers to the email held under Global System Setup of the Administrator Console) or a specific users email address.

In the body of template, there is the ability to insert additional data from the database. Within the Insert feature setting, this now displays a new option called Report Schedule.

Click Ok to save the template.

3/ Return to the Administrator Console, choose Scheduled Events and click Add.

Settings Tab:

  • Description: This is the name of, or explanation of, the event which displays in the Administrator Console
  • Report: Choose the report required to be generated into the email
  • Template: Pass in the name of the email template designed from step 1
  • Export as: This is the output file type of the report that will attach onto email

Date/Time Tab:

  • Scheduled: Tick this box to activate the schedule event
  • Recurrence Type: Set the recurrence frequency of the scheduled event as required. This can be set daily, weekly, monthly, every few minutes, or only run once.
  • Start Date and Time: Starting point of the Scheduled Event.

Recipient Tab:

Allocate recipients to receive the Scheduled Event email and report.

Add Recipient  – Add or edit the recipient name and email accordingly.

Execute Query on Success is an additional section where a custom query can be set.

This is triggered upon the scheduler event success when sending the email.

A working example of this could be that you are sending all invoices generated  via the TimeTrak Scheduler to save a user manually sending these.

You would need a field to be updated on the event success so that the scheduler does not send the same invoice twice.

In the below example an extra field “x_rs_reportemailsent” has been added to the DR_TRANS table and the below execute query has been setup to update this field when the invoice has been sent successfully.

update dr_trans set x_rs_reportemailsent = ‘Y’ where invno=@invoiceId

For this process, please liaise with a TimeTrak consultant, as this will affect database data.

Example Query:

This example shows a specific client’s task summary, relating to specific Job IDs against that client, to be emailed to a specific recipient every third week day of every month.

Note: The Report Parameters passed into the Job Start and End Date criteria is that of the previous month in relation to the day that the report is run.

For example: A client task summary report could be set to generate to an account manager on the 3rd working day of every month (to ensure the previous months time entries are completed). This way the account manager would be aware of all the activity against the account for the month. In this example the prefixed parameters #LastDayOfPreviousMonth and #FirstDayOfPreviousMonth are required.

To see the prefixed parameters hover over the question mark icon as per below.

 As noted any field on the data source table can be used as a parameter value keyword by entering the column name enclosed in  [ ] brackets

This email template is created specifically for the scheduled event