Scheduled Reports

The Scheduled Reports feature allows you to set a report to be sent out via email on a recurring schedule. This feature requires that the Report Builder and Report Builder: Email Option both be turned on. As of the 2024.09-02 release, Scheduled Reports now have an unsubscribe option. Recipients who receive the email can remove themselves from the distribution list - unless they are the only recipient, in which case the report needs to be deleted to cease distribution via the schedule.

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Setup

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To enable the Scheduled Reports Option

1. Navigate to the backend of the system (e.g. https://www.curatorexample.com/backend).
2. Log in if prompted.
3. Click on Settings > Curator > Portal Settings in the left navigation.
4. Click on the “Features” tab at the top of the main page content.
5. Click to switch on the “Scheduled Reports Option” setting under the “Toolbar Buttons (Curator Actions)” section and click the “Save” button.

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To configure the default bcc, subject, and body

1. Navigate to the backend of the system (e.g. https://www.curatorexample.com/backend).
2. Log in if prompted.
3. Click on Settings > Curator > Portal Settings in the left navigation.
4. Click on the “Report Builder” tab at the top of the main page content.
5. Scroll down and expand the “Report Builder Email Settings” section.
6. Fill out the “Email BCC Addresses”, “Email subject”, or “Email body” files as desired, under the “Report Builder Email Settings” section and click the “Save” button.

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To configure the scheduled report format

1. Navigate to the backend of the system (e.g. https://www.curatorexample.com/backend).
2. Log in if prompted.
3. Click on Settings > Curator > Portal Settings in the left navigation.
4. Click on the “Report Builder” tab at the top of the main page content.
5. Scroll down and expand the “Report Builder Email Settings” section.
6. Locate the Scheduled Report Format dropdown and select either PDF (default) or PowerPoint.
7. Click the “Save” button.

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To send a scheduled report with the built report

1. Navigate to the backend of the system (e.g. https://www.curatorexample.com/backend).
2. Log in if prompted.
3. Navigate to the desired Dashboard by using the navigation menu.
4. Generate the images you want to use for your report.
5. Click on the presentation icon at the top right portion of the screen. Normally this is displayed on the right side of the title bar in the Dashboard.
6. Click on the Schedule button to “Schedule recurring report email”.
7. Click on the “New Scheduled Report” button
8. Fill out the Email Address(es) field with the desired recipients. You can enter multiple email addresses by using commas to separate them.
9. If you have the correct permissions you can edit the subject and body.
10. Select the Recurring Schedule time frame you want your report sent out on.
11. Click the send button when finished.

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Existing Scheduled Reports

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Backend overview

1. Once Scheduled Reports are setup, navigate to the backend of the system (e.g. https://www.curatorexample.com/backend).
2. Log in if prompted.
3. Click on Tableau > Scheduled Reports in the left navigation.

In this view, you can see all existing Scheduled Reports and status information like last sent and is active?. By using the checkboxes on the left side, you can select which Scheduled Reports you want to send out immediately. You can also create a new Scheduled Report by clicking on New Scheduled Report. By clicking on a specific Scheduled Report you enter Edit Mode. You can edit details of your Scheduled Report, change the schedule, change the status and trigger sending out the report. You can also delete the Scheduled Report.

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Clone Scheduled Reports (2023.10-03)

To duplicate a scheduled report, this can be done on the backend of Curator by system administrators. To clone a report, simply visit the edit-report page, and click the “Clone” button in the top-right corner of the page. This will display a “Clone Report” page where you can change the title and create your new report.

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Frontend overview (available in release 2023.02.22)

If you want to give users an overview of their existing Scheduled Reports, follow the steps below:

1. Navigate to the backend of the system (e.g. https://www.curatorexample.com/backend).
2. Log in if prompted.
3. Click on Settings > Curator > Portal Settings in the left navigation.
4. Navigate to the Features tab > open the Toolbar Buttons (Curator Actions) section.
5. Enable Manage my Scheduled Reports - Page

As a frontend user:

1. Navigate to the frontend of the system (e.g. https://www.curatorexample.com).
2. Open the user menu in the top right corner by clicking on your username.
3. Click on My Scheduled Reports.

In this view, you can see all your existing Scheduled Reports and information like schedule, timezone and is active?. By clicking on the pencil icon of a specific Scheduled Report you enter Edit Mode. You can edit details of your Scheduled Report, change the schedule, change the status and trigger sending out the report. By clicking on the bin icon, you delete the specific Scheduled Report.

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Timezone Settings

Curator has two timezone settings that affect when Scheduled Reports are delivered:

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Global Cron Timezone

The Cron Timezone setting controls the timezone that Curator’s scheduler uses for all recurring background tasks, including Scheduled Reports, cache warming, user sync, and integration scripts. To configure:

1. Navigate to the backend of the system (e.g. https://www.curatorexample.com/backend).
2. Log in if prompted.
3. Click on Settings > Curator > Portal Settings in the left navigation.
4. On the General tab, find the Cron Timezone dropdown and select your preferred timezone.
5. Click the “Save” button.

The Cron Time of Day field directly below it controls what time daily and weekly scheduled tasks run, using the Cron Timezone selected above.

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Per-Report Timezone

Each individual Scheduled Report has its own Timezone field in its schedule configuration. This is the timezone that the report creator selects when choosing “send at 9:00 AM” — Curator converts that to the correct time internally. The per-report timezone is independent of the global Cron Timezone. If a report is set to send at 9:00 AM America/New_York, it will be delivered at 9:00 AM Eastern regardless of what the Cron Timezone is set to.

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Backend User Timezone Preference

Backend administrators each have a personal timezone preference (set under Backend > Preferences). This setting only affects how dates and times are displayed in the backend interface — it does not affect when Scheduled Reports are sent. For more information, see Backend Administrators.

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Troubleshooting

If scheduled reports are not sending — either on their automatic schedule or when triggered manually from the backend — or are arriving at the wrong time, work through the checklist below in order. Most delivery problems come from one of these seven causes.

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1. Confirm all required features are enabled

Scheduled Reports depend on two other features being enabled first. All three toggles live on the same tab:

1. Navigate to Settings > Curator > Portal Settings and open the Features tab.
2. Confirm Report Builder is enabled.
3. Confirm Report Builder: Email Option is enabled.
4. Confirm Report Builder: Scheduled Reports Option is enabled.

Email Option depends on Report Builder, and Scheduled Reports Option depends on both — so if a higher-level toggle is off, the ones beneath it cannot be used and reports will not send.

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2. Verify your mail (SMTP) configuration

Curator sends reports through its configured mail provider. If mail is misconfigured, a report can be processed successfully but never actually delivered.

1. Navigate to Settings > Mail > Mail Configuration.
2. Review your SMTP host, port, username, and password.
3. Click Test Saved Settings and enter an address you can check.
4. If the test email does not arrive within 5 minutes, check your spam folder.
5. Correct any SMTP errors and re-test before retrying the report.

For full mail setup instructions, see Email Configuration.

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3. Check the cron job

Curator’s scheduler dispatches Scheduled Reports from the server’s cron job (the schedule:run command). If that cron is not running, no reports will ever be sent, no matter how they are configured. To confirm the cron is running and fix common problems, see Linux Cron Troubleshooting.

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4. Check for stuck or errored queued processes

Reports are delivered as background jobs. A job that errored or is stuck from a previous attempt can indicate why a delivery failed.

1. Navigate to Settings > Curator > Queued Processes.
2. Look for jobs whose status begins with Error — the status text describes why the delivery failed.
3. Look for jobs stuck in Pending for an unusually long time, which can indicate a stalled queue worker.
4. Use Clear Errors or Clear Pending from the toolbar to clear them out, then retrigger the report.

For more information, see Queued Processes.

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5. Check the report’s active status

When a Scheduled Report is next due to send, Curator checks that the frontend user who owns it still exists. If that user’s account has been deleted, Curator automatically marks the report inactive, writes a Could not find owner for Scheduled Report line to the log, and skips the send.

1. Navigate to Tableau > Scheduled Reports in the backend.
2. Check the Is Active? column for the affected report.
3. If the report is inactive and its original owner still exists, open the report and re-enable it. If the owning user has been deleted, the report must be recreated by a current user.

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6. After moving servers or moving to a new data center

If Scheduled Reports start failing immediately after Curator is moved to new server hardware or a new data center, check both of the following before assuming the schedules themselves are broken. Outbound mail may now be blocked. A new server has a new outbound IP address. If your SMTP provider or mail relay allow-lists sender IP addresses, the new server’s address may not be authorized yet, so every send fails even though your mail settings in Curator have not changed. Re-run Test Saved Settings from the new server (see step 2 above) and, if it fails, ask whoever administers your mail relay to allow-list the new outbound IP address. When a send fails this way, Curator writes a Failed to send scheduled report line to the Event Log (Settings > Logs > Event Log) and attempts to email a “Scheduled Report Failure” notice to your backend administrators. Because mail itself is what is broken, that notice usually cannot be delivered either — so check the Event Log directly instead of waiting for a failure email to arrive. Timestamps in the Event Log and Queued Processes are recorded in UTC. Curator stores every timestamp in UTC and the backend displays them in UTC by default, so an entry can appear several hours away from the wall clock on the new server. This is expected and is not evidence that the new server’s clock is wrong. The Cron Timezone setting and each report’s own Timezone field control when reports are delivered; they do not change how these timestamps are displayed. To display backend dates and times in your own timezone instead, set the Timezone preference described in Backend Administrators.

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7. Reports sending exactly one hour early or late

If the affected reports are off by exactly one hour — and only by one hour — this is almost always a Daylight Saving Time (DST) transition rather than a timezone misconfiguration. Curator converts each report’s local send time into UTC and stores that converted value alongside the report. When a Daylight Saving Time change occurs after that value was last calculated, the stored value can be an hour off from the report’s intended local send time until it is recalculated. Curator detects and repairs this automatically. When the scheduler finds a report whose stored delivery time is within an hour of the current time, it recalculates and saves the corrected value. Note that the first send after a DST change may still go out up to an hour early or late — it is the sends after that one which return to the correct local time. To correct the delivery time immediately instead of waiting for the next scheduled run, open the affected report and click Save without changing any fields. Saving always recalculates the delivery time. You can do this from Tableau > Scheduled Reports in the backend, or as a frontend user from the My Scheduled Reports page. Changing the Cron Timezone described above also recalculates the delivery times for every existing Scheduled Report, so reports corrected as a side effect of that change need no further action. If reports are still off by exactly one hour after you save them again, contact Curator support with the report name, its configured Timezone, and the exact time it was actually sent.

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Still not working?

If reports are still not sending after working through these steps, contact support with:

• The exact status text shown in Queued Processes (if any)
• Your SMTP settings (host, port, and encryption type — not the password)
• The result of the Test Saved Settings mail test
• Your server cron log for the schedule:run command