How to Create a Report – Patch Retention: Help Center

Interested in important data and want to receive periodic reports?

This article will cover how to create a report and then set up a report automation to be sent via email on a regular schedule.

Let's get started!

Create a New Report

In the lower right corner select the (+) button to create a new report.
Name the report and select ‘Filtered Event Log’ for the ‘Report Type’.
You will then need to specify the parameters for what information will be in the report:
Date Range, Event Type(s), Columns to Export
Choose a Date Range
You must specify a time frame from the drop-down list.
Select Event Type(s)
These are the same events to choose from in the Activity Log
Note: You can select more than one Event (if desired)
Choose Columns to Export
- Selecting the ‘Export Columns’ is similar to managing the 'fields view' from the Contacts module. For more on that article, click here.
- These are the columns/fields of information that will appear in your report.
  
  Choose as many or as few fields as needed. The order these fields appear can be rearranged.
- To include/search Deleted Events, select the checkbox.
- You can include rules to filter the results for the report.
Once the report is created, you can download it immediately by selecting the button!

Automate the Report

If you want to set up reports to be emailed on a regular basis, continue the walk-through for how to set up an automation, to automate that process.
- Now that the report has been created, let’s create an automation to send the report on a schedule!
- Create an Automation.
  
  Go to the Automation Module and select the (+) button in the lower right corner to create a new automation.
- Choose ‘Start From Scratch’ when creating this automation.
- Name the Automation

A blank canvas will appear for us to create the automation with.
Let’s build the automation to schedule this report to be sent via email on a scheduled date/time!

Start by clicking and dragging the ‘At Time’ block onto the canvas.
This block is located under the ‘Triggers’ options.
For reports to run periodically, select the option ‘Repeating’.
Select the Start/End Date
Select the Repeating frequency, you can even limit it to specific days.

A list of Upcoming Times will appear based on the selections.
Once the At Time block has been set up, next let’s use the ‘Create Report’ block. This block is located under the ‘Actions’ options. Drag this action trigger block onto the canvas.
It will populate with a list that you can search through.
Then select the newly created report.
- Search or scroll to find the desired report.
- Once the report has been selected, it will appear that it is properly linked.
  You can see here where it displays the Report URL SmartText: {{ report_url }}
  This SmartText is used in the send email block.
- After saving the selected Report, we then want to add the next block in the automation.
Click and drag the ‘Select Contacts’ block onto the canvas.
For this Select Contacts block in the report automation, we want to focus on the ‘Limit to Specific Contacts’ section.
- In the Select Contacts block, use the email address of the person that wishes to receive the report.
  
  In order to select this specific contact to send to, they need to already exist in the database.
  
  So if the email address does not already exist in the Contacts module, create a contact with this info!
- Once a specific contact is selected, it will appear in a green bubble.
Once the select contacts block has been set up, the last block to use is the ‘Send Email’ block.
Once you drag and drop this Action Block, it will give you the option to choose from Templates, but we want to ‘Start From Scratch’.
For the ‘Send Email’ block, we must first configure the ‘Send Settings’
- Enter a subject for the email
- Choose an email domain for the email to ‘Send From’
- You can send this report to multiple email addresses if needed, but this will require configuration.
- For more on this optional step to send the report to multiple people, check out the end of this article.
In the ‘Rich Content’ section, be sure to include in the content, the SmartKey Text:
{{ report_url }}
- This text needs to be added anywhere within the text portion of the email.
Once the Send Email block is set up, the last steps are to connect each block and enable the automation.
- To connect each block, hover over the block, and then from the list of icons beneath the block, click on the arrow, and then drag the arrow to the next block to connect them together. Connect all blocks as shown below.
  
  To enable the automation, click the toggle switch in the upper right corner!
After the automation runs, the number(s) will update to confirm that that part of the automation has been completed.

In the example below, we can see that this monthly report has run 21 times so far.

This completes the walk-through of how to create a report, and have it sent on a regular schedule by using automations!

Reach out to us at success@patchretention.com with any other questions or concerns!

(Optional Step to send the report to multiple contacts)

To send a report to multiple people each time, configure this from the Account Settings > General Field selections.

Go into the Account Settings, then ‘General Fields’, and add a new field with the (+) button.
Create and name the new field, ‘reportemail’.
You can then use the SmartText key to include these additional email addresses.

In the email 'Send Settings' configuration, enter into the 'CC' blank:
{{ general.reportemail }}
This is how you can have multiple people receive the report emails!

Related articles