Recurring Reports Setup

Recurring Reports Setup

Scheduled Reports automate repeat questions and keep stakeholders aligned.

If you only need a personal future nudge, use a reminder instead. If the question should run and produce output on a cadence for a group, use a Scheduled Report.

What Scheduled Reports Include

Each scheduled report can include:

• A saved analytics question
• A run cadence (daily, weekly, or monthly)
• A run time based on your organization timezone
• Recipients (team members, stakeholders, and external email addresses)
• An AI-written executive summary for the run
• Optional visualization output
• A saved run history for reviewing a specific delivery later
• Follow-up chat from eligible report runs

Setup Workflow

1. Start from a proven question or widget-driven workflow
2. Give the report a clear title
3. Set cadence and run time
4. Select recipients
5. Enable visualization if useful
6. Save and verify first delivery

When you create a report from a completed chat answer, DashboardGenius keeps a bounded version of that analysis context. Scheduled runs use that context version, while source permissions, business context, and live data are refreshed when each run executes.

Reports created directly from Scheduled Reports are tested before activation. If an older report shows Needs validation, open it and select Test and enable follow-up.

If you are unsure where to start, use a question that already works well in chat before trying to operationalize a new prompt directly in reporting.

Cadence Selection Guide

• Daily: shift performance and fast-moving operations metrics
• Weekly: downtime patterns and improvement rollups
• Monthly: leadership summaries and quality trend reviews

Choose the slowest cadence that still supports decision-making. This keeps signal high.

Recipient Strategy

Use a role-based list:

• Team members: active operators and analysts
• Stakeholders: leaders or partners who need visibility
• External emails: recipients who should receive every run without a DashboardGenius account

The report's Overview shows the current recipient list used for future runs. Editing that list does not change the recipient snapshot saved on earlier runs.

Manage team members and saved stakeholders from People & Team so names, roles, and ownership stay current. Add or remove external addresses while editing the Scheduled Report.

Review recipients at least quarterly.

Writing Better Scheduled Questions

Use explicit time logic and output intent.

Examples:

• "Every Monday, summarize last week's downtime by line and top causes."
• "On the first day of each month, summarize prior month reject trends by SKU family and top changes."

Questions that already work well in chat usually work best as reports after only light cleanup.

Best Candidates for Scheduled Reports

Good report candidates:

• shift or daily summaries
• weekly downtime reviews
• quality trend rollups
• production versus demand snapshots
• leadership summaries that already follow a standard structure

Poor report candidates:

• one-off investigations
• prompts that depend on constantly changing manual context
• exploratory questions that need follow-up every time
• personal nudges that do not need DashboardGenius to rerun the analysis

Scheduled Reports vs Reminders

Use Scheduled Reports when the team needs DashboardGenius to answer a question on a cadence.

Use Reminders when you need to remember to revisit an existing thread, decision, or future condition.

Examples:

• Scheduled Report: "Every Monday, summarize last week's downtime by line and top causes."
• Reminder: "Remind me next Friday to check whether the short-stock items recovered."

Manage Existing Reports

From Scheduled Reports, you can:

• Review active versus paused reports from one list
• Open a report's Overview and paginated Runs history
• Review the status, delivery count, answer preview, visualization availability, and context version for a specific run
• Expand Send details to see the owner-only recipient status recorded for that run
• Select Open run to continue that exact successful run in chat
• Pause or resume reports
• Edit settings and recipients
• Delete reports you no longer need

Treat paused reports as intentional backlog, not permanent storage.

Ask Follow-up Questions

For a successful run, select Open run in the report's Runs tab. DashboardGenius opens the exact scheduled question and answer as a private conversation, with the context version used by that execution available for follow-up reasoning.

Eligible active team-member recipients also receive Ask a follow-up in DashboardGenius in the report email. The link opens that exact run after sign-in. External stakeholders and external-email recipients still receive the report, but do not receive internal source-backed chat access.

In run history, Sent means the email provider accepted the message for delivery. It does not claim that the recipient opened the message or that the destination mail server ultimately delivered it. Older runs may show only aggregate counts because recipient-level send details were not recorded at the time.

The separate Share Report action sends the current report once. It does not add recipients to a Scheduled Report.

Reopening the same run returns the same private conversation for that user. Different eligible recipients get separate private conversations, so one person's follow-up doesn't change another person's thread.

Report Ownership Hygiene

Every important scheduled report should have:

• a clear business owner
• a clean recipient list
• a question that still matches the current meeting or decision process

If any of those drift, update the report instead of letting a stale automation keep running.

Troubleshooting

Report output is not useful

Refine the underlying question first, then save again.

Too much email volume

Reduce cadence or narrow recipient lists.

Missing key recipients

Add team members or stakeholders in People & Team, then update the report recipient list.

For someone who does not have a DashboardGenius account, edit the report and type their email address directly. They will appear as an External email recipient and receive future runs by email without internal follow-up-chat access.

The summary is technically correct but not decision-ready

Tighten the original question. Specify the metric, period, scope, and desired output so the report does not guess what matters.

A report exists, but nobody trusts it anymore

Re-validate the underlying question against the live source and current routing before deleting it. Many trust problems come from drift in the question, recipient list, or data source rather than the scheduling surface itself.

A run can't be opened in chat

Only successful runs with a saved answer and reusable context can be opened. Older reports may need owner validation first. Failed or incomplete runs remain visible for diagnosis but can't be turned into a misleading chat.

Next Guide

Continue with Visualizations and Sharing Insights.