Scheduled generation means that gas creates the PDF report on its own: always after the chosen period ends, on the same day and at the same time, and sends it by email to the people you choose. It is useful wherever you send the report to a client or to management regularly and want to know in advance when it will be ready.
Before you start
- Reports must be part of your customer account plan. You can tell by seeing the Reports item in the left-hand menu.
- Only the Administrator and User roles may create and change a report. The Viewer role can only open and download a finished report.
- Only an Administrator can load the list of recipients. In the User role the recipients of an automatic report will not load and the settings cannot be saved, which is why scheduling is usually set up by the customer account administrator.
- The profiles and ad accounts the report should draw on must be linked in Settings → Customer account → Linked accounts.
- What a report is made of is described in the articles Creating a report step by step and Report sections and their content.
How to do it
- In the left-hand menu open Reports.
- In the top right click New settings. If you want to change the schedule of an automated report you already have, click the pencil icon in its row.
- Fill in the Report name. You will see the report under this name in the list and in the email subject.
- In the Run type field select Automatic.
- In the Schedule field select Weekly, Monthly, Quarterly or Yearly.
- If you want the first report right away and do not want to wait for the current period to end, tick Include previous period.
- In the Email delivery card, in the Recipients field, select either All customer account users or Selected users, and then the specific User accounts.
- Below, put together the content of the report: sections, cover page and layout.
- At the bottom click Save settings.
When exactly the report is created
The report is always calculated for a closed calendar period and it runs on the third day after the period ends, at 9:00 in the morning. The three-day gap is deliberate: social networks and advertising systems finish counting the figures for the last few days with a delay, so a report created earlier would show lower values than the ones that finally apply. The same rule is repeated in the sentence below the settings: "The report is always generated after 9:00 on the third day after the period ends."
| Schedule | Period the report covers | When it is generated |
|---|---|---|
| Weekly | Monday to Sunday | on the Wednesday after the week ends, at 9:00 |
| Monthly | a whole calendar month | on the 3rd of the following month at 9:00 |
| Quarterly | January to March, April to June, July to September, October to December | 3 April, 3 July, 3 October and 3 January at 9:00 |
| Yearly | 1 January to 31 December | 3 January at 9:00 |
Times are in Czech time. So that all reports do not start in the same second, gas spreads them across a half-hour window, so runs start between 9:00 and 9:30.
You can see the date of the next run for every automatic report in the Reports list, in the Next run column.
Ticking Include previous period means that shortly after saving, gas generates one extra report, for the last period whose generation date has already passed. This report counts towards the annual report limit just like any other.
What happens next
You follow the progress in the Reports list, where an automated report has its row in the Automated reports table. There is a label in the Status column:
- Ready to run: the settings are saved and the generation date is awaited.
- Generating: the run is in the queue or is being processed right now, a progress indicator runs in the row. The status switches by itself, you do not have to reload the page manually.
- Ready to download: at least one period is finished and the PDF is ready.
- Error: the last run failed. The reason and a Try again button are right there in the row.
- Canceled: the run ended before it could finish.
The label describes the report as a whole, not an individual run. As soon as at least one finished PDF exists, the label stays at Ready to download, even if some later period did not work out.
The Latest output column holds the period of the latest finished PDF, the date it was generated and the size of the file; the button in the row downloads it. The arrow to the left of the name expands the report and shows six latest periods as tiles, each with its own download. A new output you have not seen yet is marked with the new badge.
Older periods you find through the Show all N periods link, which opens the side panel Period history with all the runs grouped by year, with a field for filtering the periods and with the option to download the PDF or copy a link to it.
In addition, recipients get:
- an email with the subject "Report ready: report name" and a Download PDF button,
- an alert directly in the application, that is on the bell in the header.
Generation itself usually takes a few minutes. According to operating data, most runs finish within five minutes and practically all of them within an hour. An extensive report with many profiles and with post previews takes longer than a short overview.
When a run fails
A scheduled run repeats itself, up to six times, with a gradually longer pause: 15 minutes, 30 minutes, an hour, two hours, four hours. So the report survives a short outage and usually finishes the same day, just a few hours later. The email is only sent after a successful completion, so you will never receive an unfinished report.
If even the last attempt fails, the period stays without a PDF and no email arrives. You see the failure directly in the row of the report together with the reason, and in the Administrator role you can repeat it with the Try again button; for an older period the same button is in the Period history panel. If even the repeated run does not work out, create a one-off report for the same period, the procedure is in the last paragraph of the Common problems section.
As soon as some later run succeeds, gas deletes the records of the earlier failed attempts of the same report and the Error label disappears.
Changing and switching off the schedule
- In the Reports list click the pencil icon next to the automatic report.
- Change what you need: schedule, recipients, sections, cover page or layout.
- Click Save settings.
The change applies to the next generation. A run always uses the settings valid at the moment it starts, so a change made at any time before the generation date is fully reflected in the next report. Nothing is recalculated retroactively: previously generated PDFs remain available for download in their original form.
You switch scheduling off by changing the report to One-off in the Run type field, selecting a period and saving. No further automatic runs will be created. Be aware of two consequences: saving a one-off report immediately starts one generation for the chosen period, and a one-off report no longer has a pencil icon in the list, so you would switch the schedule on only in a copy of it. You create a copy in the Actions menu under the three dots icon.
The other option is to delete the report, which only an Administrator may do. Deleting is also in the Actions menu. Deleting also removes all generated PDFs and the whole history, and the reports already used are not returned to the annual limit.
Common problems
The report did not arrive on the usual day
Open the Reports list, expand the report with the arrow to the left of the name and check whether the period you are looking for is among them; for older periods use the Period history panel. If the period is there, generation went through and the problem is in delivery: check your junk mail folder and the subscription settings (see below). If the period is missing, the run did not finish, see the section When a run fails.
The Running label has been on for several hours
The run is waiting in the queue or is repeating after an error with a gap that gets longer with each attempt, up to four hours. Let the report finish, it usually completes the same day. If the state persists into the next day, contact support.
A whole section is missing from the report
The profile or ad account the section draws on does not have an active connection: it was unlinked from the customer account, it is marked for deletion, or the login to the platform has expired. gas leaves such a section out so that the rest of the report arrives on time, and it adds a Skipped profiles overview to the last page of the PDF, with the profile name, the network and the reason. At the same time an alert arrives, "Report ... skipped a disconnected profile". You fix this by reconnecting in Settings → Customer account → Linked accounts.
After reconnecting I want the report complete
You do not have to do anything. As soon as the profile is linked again, gas regenerates the report for the affected period on its own, this time in full, and it does not use up another report from the annual limit. Recipients get the alert "Report ... has been completed and regenerated". For Facebook and Instagram profiles the system waits until the history is counted, so the completion may come after some delay.
The report did not arrive at all and the profiles are unlinked
If, after leaving out the unlinked profiles, no content section would be left in the report, gas does not create an empty PDF and the run ends with an error. Fix the profile connections and the report will be generated at the next date.
The section is in the report, but there are no figures in it
The profile is linked correctly, but it has nothing to show for that period: nothing was published, the campaign was not running, the website had no visits. Check the same period directly in the application. If the data is empty there too, the report is fine and simply shows faithfully that nothing happened in that period.
The annual report limit is used up
Every completed report counts towards the limit for the last 365 days. You can see how many you have left in Settings → Customer account → Subscription, in the Limits and usage part. In addition, a bar with a message about the exhausted annual limit appears in the report settings. When the limit is used up, the scheduled run will not be generated. So when choosing the schedule, take into account how many reports you use up per year: one for a yearly report, four for quarterly, twelve for monthly and fifty-two for weekly. The solution is a higher plan or a longer period.
Several reports for older periods arrived at once
If some closed period was left without a report, for example because the schedule was switched off for a while or you changed the schedule to a shorter one, gas calculates the missing periods retroactively and sends them out. Each of them counts towards the annual limit, so after changing the schedule it is worth checking the limit.
I changed the settings in the middle of a period
That is not a problem. The next run uses the settings valid at the moment of generation, so including your change, even if you made it in the middle of the period. Older reports are not recalculated and stay as they were created.
The automatic report cannot be saved, it reports a missing recipient
The message "A scheduled report requires at least one customer user account with an email address." means one of two things: either there is nobody in the customer account with an email address filled in, or you are creating the report in the User role and the list of recipients does not load for you, because only an Administrator can see it. In the second case, ask the customer account administrator to set the report up.
A colleague receives the report, but I do not
Check three places: whether you are among the report recipients (the Recipients field in the report settings), whether you have unsubscribed in Settings → User profile → Report subscriptions, and whether you have emails for the Reports group switched on in the notification settings. In-app alerts arrive even when you have emails switched off.
I need a report for a period that was not generated
Create a one-off report: on the existing report open the Actions menu (the three dots icon), choose to create a copy, in the copy set Run type to One-off and select the period. Saving starts the generation right away. The chosen period must end at least three days before today, otherwise the message "The selected period must end at least 3 days before generation so that complete data is available." appears. A one-off run also counts towards the annual limit.