Having access to the right data can help businesses find answers to important questions and make better decisions. Print Tracker's custom reports lets users explore their data in a way that suits their needs by allowing them to create and save personalized reports.
Overview
Custom reports supports a variety of report types, such as device, install, and meter reports, making it versatile for different types of business questions. This flexibility allows you to focus on specific aspects of your operations. To build and customize these reports, the feature utilizes SQLite, a variant of SQL that is lightweight and efficient. By leveraging SQLite, you can easily manage and manipulate their data, creating tailored reports that help you better understand their business and make data-driven decisions.
Structured Query Language (SQL)
In order to allow you to customize your reports, custom reports utilizes SQL, or Structured Query Language, a programming language specifically designed to help you access and retrieve information. SQL allows you to select and filter the precise pieces of information, while also enabling you to sort, group, and perform calculations on that data. This makes it a powerful and user-friendly tool to quickly obtain and analyze information stored in a structured format, meeting your specific requirements or interests.
Custom reports utilizes a variant of SQL called SQLite.
Running Reports
You can run reports directly from the report editor to test your query and view a sample of the results. To run a report:
Using the sidebar, click Insights > Reports
Find the report you want to run and click on it
On the right side of the query editor, click the Run button
A sample of the results will be displayed below the query editor, to view the full results, see exporting reports.
When you run a report by clicking the Run button, you are only shown a sample of the results. This allows you to quickly adjust and test a report without having to run the report against all your data. To run the report against all of your data, see exporting reports.
Exporting Reports
Exporting a report runs your report for all of your data (rather than just a sample like running a report). The results are exported as a CSV and downloaded to your computer. To export a report:
Using the sidebar, click Insights > Reports
Find the report you want to export and click on it
On the right side of the query editor, click the Export button
The report will be exported and downloaded to your computer
Creating Reports
To create a custom report:
Using the sidebar, click Insights > Reports
Click New report
Enter a name for the report
Click Confirm
Your new report has been created and will have appeared in the list of custom reports
Click on your new report to open it
Report Configuration
You can configure a report using the report editor. The report editor allows you to:
Change the name and description of the report
Change the report type
View the report's schema (the columns that fields that are available for use in the report)
Change the SQL query used to generate the report
Run the report to view a sample of the report
Export the report to a CSV file
Schema Viewer
Each report type has its own schema. The schema determines which columns are available for use in your custom report. Each column has a name and a particular data type. For example, to utilize the device's firmware in a report, you could reference the firmware column. The data type of this column is varchar which is a string of characters. On the other hand the created_timestamp column is of time datetime indicating that we can perform custom date-related calculations on this column, such as calculating the number of days since this device was created.
Query Editor
The query editor is where you will build, customize, and test your reports. Each report type comes with a default query that you can use as a starting point. You can also use the schema viewer to help you build your query. Queries are written in SQL using the SQLite dialect.
Query Results
Whenever you click the Run button in the query editor, the results will be displayed below the editor. The results are only a sample of your data which allows you to quickly test your reports on a small subset of your data without having to wait for the entire report to run.
No results? When adding WHERE clauses to your query, you might find that no results are returned when you test your query. This is because when testing the report by clicking Run, the query is only run on a sample of your data, and there's no guarantee that the rows in the sample will also match the WHERE clause. For these types of queries, you can use the Export button to export the entire report to a CSV file and then open the file in a spreadsheet application to view the results.
Editing and Saving Reports
You can change your report type, the name, description, or query at anytime. To save your changes, click the Save button in the bottom right-hand corner.
Sharing Reports
You can control who can run your custom report by changing the report's sharing mode. Print Tracker supports three different sharing modes:
Only me - Only you can access the report. Administrators and Print Tracker support will not be able to access the report.
Entity - Users at the report's entity will be able to see and run the report.
Children - Users at the report's entity and all child entities will be able to see and run the report.
Regardless of sharing mode, reports are only editable by their owners, and when executed, they are always executed within the context of the currently selected entity. This means that you even if you create a report that is shared with all of your customers, when your customer runs the report, they will only see their data.
Reports created with the Entity or Children sharing modes will also be visible to users that are above you in the hierarchy.
Changing the Sharing Mode
To change the sharing mode of a report:
Using the sidebar, click Insights > Reports
Click on the report you want to change the sharing mode for
Click on the Sharing mode dropdown
Select the new sharing mode
Note that the Entity sharing mode will appear in the dropdown as the name of the report's entity.
Scheduling Reports
You have the flexibility to run ad-hoc reports whenever you need to access specific information quickly. However, you may need to receive a report on a predetermined schedule, such as a monthly billing report. Print Tracker allows you to attach any number of schedules to a custom report. By scheduling a report, you can pick the interval, time of day, the entities where the report should run and Print Tracker will automatically generate the report and send it to your email. This way, you receive the most up-to-date report directly in your inbox without having to manually run it each time.
To schedule a custom report:
Using the sidebar, click Insights > Reports
Click on the report you want to schedule
Click on the Schedules tab
Click New schedule
Schedule Configuration
There are several options available when scheduling a report:
Entity: You can create a single custom report, but create scheduled reports that run on different schedules, and for different entities. For example, you may want to create a current meter report for each of your customers. In this case you'd create a single report and then create a schedule for each one of your customer entities.
Enabled: In some cases, you may want to prevent a scheduled report from being sent without having to delete the report, or the schedule. In this case you can disable the Enabled toggle, and the report will no longer be sent.
Report schedule: You can configure the report to run on any interval you'd like. Refer to Choosing the Report Schedule for more information on how to pick the correct schedule for your report.
Timezone: Many printer fleets are distributed across multiple timezones. To ensure that the report is sent at the correct time, you can select the timezone that the report should be sent in.
Email: You can configure the report to be sent to any number of email addresses.
Subject: You can customize the subject of the email. See Email Template Variables for a list of variables that you can use in the subject line.
Body: You can customize the body of the email. See Email Template Variables for a list of variables that you can use in the body.
Choosing the Report Schedule
The right report schedule depends on the report type that you're using. Understanding how schedules work in conjunction with the report type will help you pick the correct schedule for your report.
Email Template Variables
Scheduled custom report emails can be configured with a custom subject and body line. In order to make it easier to customize these fields, you can use variables in the subject and body. The following variables are available:
Variable | Description |
| The name of the report. In the example screenshots above, the report name is "My Report" |