Scheduled deliveries and alerts

Overview

A scheduled delivery sends a report or dashboard on a recurring basis. An alert sends it only when the results meet a condition you define. Both live in the same dialog and share a few prerequisites that cause most of the questions we receive.

In this article, we'll be covering what must be in place before you can schedule, how deliveries run, and how to troubleshoot a delivery that didn't arrive.

Meet the prerequisites

• The dashboard must be published. The Deliveries & Alerts and Schedule delivery options don't appear on a draft or on a workbook without a dashboard. If you don't see them, add a dashboard to your report with + Dashboard, then publish it.
• You need edit access to the report. Viewers can't create deliveries.
• Built-in reports and dashboards can be scheduled as they are. Hover a tile and select Schedule delivery, or use the File menu. You only need your own copy if you want to change the content before it's sent.

Understand how deliveries run

• One destination per delivery. To send the same dashboard by email and to Slack, create two deliveries.
• Deliveries run as the person who created them. Recipients receive exactly what the creator can see, regardless of their own permissions. If the creator leaves or loses access, the delivery stops working; recreate it under another owner.
• Timing is approximate. A delivery arrives within about 15 minutes of the scheduled time.
• Failures aren't retried. If a run fails, the creator receives a failure email and the next scheduled run happens as normal.
• "Results have changed" alerts start on the second run. The first run only records a baseline.

Create a delivery or alert

1. Open the published dashboard.
2. Open the File menu and select Deliveries & Alerts, or hover a tile and select Schedule delivery or Alert....
3. Set Delivery to Schedule or Alert.
4. Under Send, pick the whole dashboard, its charts, or one query.
5. Under Destination, pick Email, Slack, Google Sheets, Amazon S3, SFTP, or Webhook and fill in its details.
6. On the Schedule tab, set the frequency, time, and time zone. For an alert, also set the Condition on the Alert tab.
7. On the Chart tab, pick the format (PNG, PDF, XLSX, CSV, JSON).
8. Select Test now to send a test, then Save.

Email recipients don't need a gaiia account. If a recipient never receives deliveries, ask their IT team to check spam and quarantine filters.

Manage existing deliveries

Open the File menu and select Deliveries & Alerts to see every delivery on the document. From there you can edit or delete a delivery, and send a one-off run with Test now.

Troubleshoot a delivery that didn't arrive

1. Check the schedule: time zone, days selected, and whether it's paused.
2. Check the creator's inbox for a failure email. It names the cause.
3. Check spam or quarantine on the recipient side. When some recipients receive a delivery and others don't on the same day, the difference is almost always mail filtering at the recipient's organization, since a single run either sends to all recipients or fails for all.
4. Check the content: an alert only sends when its condition is met, and "no results" conditions can be met silently.
5. Send us the details: if the above doesn't explain it, contact support@gaiia.com with the report name, the delivery name, the expected time, and which recipients did and didn't receive it. Delivery logs are kept for 24 hours, so report it the same day when you can.