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Creating schedules & alerts

Schedules and alerts are useful for keeping your team up-to-date on the latest with your data. In this guide, you'll learn how to automate the delivery of dashboards and tiles by using Omni deliveries.

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​

  1. Navigate to a published dashboard.

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

  3. Fill in the following:

    • Delivery - Select Schedule or Alert.
    • Send - Select the content to be delivered.
    • Destination - Select where the delivery should be sent. Note: Google Sheets is only available with single tile deliveries.
    • 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 to send in the local timezone of the delivery creator's computer. Use the Times are in drop down to change the timezone.

info

Schedule send timezone may be different than query run timezone. For example if your database timezone is UTC with no other timezone conversion settings and you set your schedule to send at 12:00 PM PST, the query will execute at 8:00 PM UTC. Refer to your connection timezone settings for more detail.

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. By default, the most frequent you can configure a schedule is hourly.

3. Select format & filter options​

In the Dashboard or Chart tab, you can:

  • Select the format of the content, such as PNG, PDF, XLSX, or CSV
  • Lightly customize the contents and layout, such as expanding tables to include up to 1,000 rows, hiding filter values, or arranging tiles in a single column.
  • Set filter or control values for the delivery. Some formats will have additional customization options. PDF formats, for example, will allow you to specify the orientation and page size for the PDF.

For dashboard deliveries, the default filters and controls will automatically be applied upon creation. Subsequent default filter value updates will not change the filter values set for existing deliveries.

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.

Did you know?

Email subjects and bodies can include Mustache references, including user attributes, allowing you to create dynamic, personalized content for recipients.

Google Sheets

To finish setting up a Google Sheets destination:

  1. Connect your Google Drive account. Note: Grant Omni all requested permissions to ensure deliveries are successful.

  2. Use the link in the Spreadsheet section to browse for and select the Google Sheet workbook to send the delivery to.

  3. Select a Write mode for the delivery:

    • Overwrite the data on a sheet - Data in the sheet is overwritten on each successful delivery, including column headers

    • Create a new sheet for each delivery - Creates a new sheet in the workbook for each successful delivery

    • Append the data on a sheet - On every successful delivery, new results are added to the specified sheet starting with the first empty row.

      Pivoted data

      Write mode options have a few considerations if you're working with pivoted data:

      • If creating a new schedule and Omni detects pivoted data in the query, the Append option will be unavailable

      • If editing a schedule and Omni detects that the query has changed to include pivoted data, it will change the write mode to Overwrite

      Refer to the Working with pivoted data section of the Google Sheets destination guide for more info.

  4. Lastly, define the sheet name. The field that displays depends on the Write mode you selected:

    • Overwrite or append - Enter the name of the sheet Omni should write data to in the Sheet name field. If Omni can't find a sheet with this exact name, it will create a sheet.

    • New sheet for each delivery - Enter a prefix for the sheet name in the New sheet name prefix field. A Unix timestamp of the delivery time will be appended to create the full sheet name: {prefix}_{unixtimestamp}

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
  • The File name you want the delivery to have, without an extension
  • An SFTP user's Username and Password
Did you know?

SFTP file names can include Mustache references like {{currentDate}}, giving you complete control over how Omni names the files it delivers.

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.

Did you know?

Slack messages can include Mustache references, including system user attributes, allowing you to create dynamic, personalized content for recipients.

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​

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.

Testing alerts

The Test Now button will be unavailable for alerts if the Condition type is Results have changed or Results have stayed the same. A workaround is to use the Send Now option to manually trigger the delivery, which is available once the delivery has been saved.

Save the alert and then click the (three dots icon) to display the Send Now option. This will initiate a check on the alert condition - if the condition isn't met, the delivery will show as successful but not send anything.

6. Save the delivery​

When finished, click Save to create the delivery.