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Creating schedules & alerts

A scheduled delivery will run at a given date/time regardless of results

Requirements​

To follow the steps in this guide, you'll need:

  • Permissions in Omni that allow you to create schedules and alerts.

  • An existing destination to send deliveries to. Refer to the destination setup guides for more information:

1. Create the delivery​

In a dashboard:

  1. Click File > Deliveries & Alerts. The delivery options will display on the left side of the page.

  2. Fill in the following:

    • Delivery - Select Schedule or Alert.
    • Send - Select the content to be delivered.
    • Destination - Select where the delivery should be sent: Email, SFTP, Slack, or webhook.
    • Name - Enter a name for the delivery.

If creating an alert, use the Alert tab to define the conditions that must be met to trigger the delivery. For example, you have a chart that tracks the Total sales for your ecommerce company. Using an alert, you can trigger a delivery when the total of your sales has changed.

2. Configure the delivery schedule​

All delivery types require a schedule:

  • For schedules, this determines when Omni will deliver the specified content to a destination
  • For alerts, this tells Omni when to check if the current query results meet the conditions required to send the delivery

To define the delivery's schedule, use the UI options (Daily, Weekly, etc.) to select a time period. For more control over timing, click the Custom option to use custom cron expressions.

Note: By default, schedules are set in the local timezone of the delivery creator's computer. Use the Times are in drop down to change the timezone.

Custom cron schedules (Advanced)

A cron expression is a string that describes the individual details of a schedule:

                                  Allowed Values    Allowed Special Characters

┌───────────── minute                  0-59              * , - /
│ ┌───────────── hour                  0-23              * , - /
│ │ ┌───────────── day of month        1-31              * , - / L W ?
│ │ │ ┌───────────── month             1-12 or JAN-DEC   * , - /
│ │ │ │ ┌───────────── day of week     1-7  or SUN-SAT   * , - / # L ?
│ │ │ │ │ ┌───────────── year          any               * , - /
│ │ │ │ │ │
* * * * * *

Using cron, you can create schedules like the following:

0 9 ? * * *          # At 9:00 AM every morning
30 6 L * ? *         # At 6:30AM on the last day of the month
45 8 ? * MON-FRI *   # At 8:45 AM every day, Monday through Friday

Omni uses Amazon Web Services' (AWS) syntax for cron expressions. Refer to the AWS documentation for more information.

3. Select format & filter options​

In the Dashboard or Chart tab, you can select the format of the content, such as PNG or CSV, and set filter values for the delivery.

Note: Dashboard deliveries will automatically apply the dashboard's default filters. Use the Filters section to specify different filter values for the delivery.

Did you know?

You can use filters to customize content for different recipients! For example, set a filter to A in a scheduled delivery to recipient A, and in another scheduled delivery to recipient B, set a filter to B.

4. Configure destination settings​

The last step is to define where the delivery will be sent. Click the last tab, which will be labeled with the type of Destination you selected.

Email

To finish setting up an email delivery, fill in the following:

  • Recipients - Add one or more recipients. Recipients can be other members of your Omni organization or non-users, such as a contractor or external stakeholder. Note: When non-users are added as recipients, Omni creates a shell account, or an email-only user. Refer to the Delivery administration guide for more information.

  • Personalize delivery with the recipient's user attributes - If enabled, the delivery will be personalized using the recipients' user attributes. Otherwise, the delivery owner's user attributes will be used.

    For example, you could use personalization to deliver a dashboard to sales managers that only displays quarterly sales data for their region.

  • Subject - Enter a subject.

  • Body - Enter a message that will display in the email body.

SFTP

To finish setting up an SFTP delivery, you'll need the following:

  • The Address of your SFTP server
  • The Port of your SFTP server
  • An SFTP user's Username and Password

Slack

To finish setting up a Slack delivery, select the Channel or user Direct message you want to receive the delivery. You can also add a message and format it with Slack markup.

Refer to the Slack deliveries guide for more information.

Webhook

To finish setting up a webhook delivery, add the webhook URL. Refer to the Webhook deliveries guide for more information.

5. Test the delivery​

This step is optional.

If you want to test the delivery before saving, click the Test Now button in the bottom left corner of the page. This will send the dashboard/chart to the destination using the current settings. For example, using Test Now would send the delivery to all Recipients.

6. Save the delivery​

When finished, click Save to create the delivery.