VSys One: Volunteer Management Software

Scheduled Report

Reports as scheduled tasks are exceptionally powerful: not only can they run most reports in VSys (assignment calendars, custom column, program statistics, slot calendar and anything based on custom reports), VSys can also deliver the results automatically.

Wow - that's ugly. But if we break it down into its constituent parts it becomes much more reasonable.

Field name

Description

Report

Use (Select report) to choose a saved report. Only assignment calendar (RTF/PDF), custom column, program statistics and reports based on custom reports can be chosen here.

Output filename

Name the file and folder where the generated report will be saved. Even if the report is being e-mailed, it must have a filename here. Use date formatting codes within curly brackets, as in the example, to have VSys dynamically name the file using the current date/time.

Deliver results when done

Checking this tells VSys to deliver the report when it's done to one or more recipients.

Compress file into a .zip file before delivery

If checked, VSys will take the file it creates (PDF, RTF, etc.) and compress it into a standard WinZip .zip file before sending it out. You probably don't want to use this for reports sent to volunteers, but for large reports and exports it can dramatically reduce the size of the file that needs to be e-mailed.

E-mail subject, E-mail body

These will be the subject and body of the e-mail that VSys sends. They're not dynamic (self-changing), but will be the same every time the report is sent regardless of recipient or results.

Sender

The e-mail address and name of the "sender" for these e-mails. Any e-mails that VSys generates will appear to come from this person.

Recipients

E-mail addresses	One or more explicit e-mail addresses to receive this report.
From lists	Check one or more lists here and VSys will send the report by e-mail to the people on those lists.
Include people as recipients if they're referenced in the report/export	For reports which include people, VSys keeps track of who it reported on. By checking this box, VSys will include those people as recipients of the report. Why would you want to do this? In the example above, we're sending out an assignment calendar report, and sending the report to everyone on the calendar. This lets everyone see everyone else's schedules as well as their own. Be careful when using this option: it's easy to run a report of everyone in the system and thus send an e-mail of that report to everyone! (Use Test mode... or Limit the number of automatic recipients below to test this first, or as a safety valve.)

cc: recipients

Same as Recipients above, except the e-mails will be sent as cc:.

bcc: recipients

Same as Recipients above, except the e-mails will be sent as bcc:.

Test mode...

Checking this tells VSys to run the report as usual, but not actually send it. The logs for this task will show who VSys intended to send it to, but VSys won't actually deliver the report.

Limit the number of automatic recipients

If checked, VSys will prevent this report from being sent to more than the set number of automatic (via lists or by being included on the report) recipients. The explicit recipients don't count towards that limit.

If VSys is instructed to deliver these reports by e-mail, it can only do so via SMTP and does not use any of the E-mail Robots. It does use the settings from the SMTP E-mail Robot and those settings must be accurate and working for report delivery to work. Delivery is immediate; a delivery failure is logged but does not result in a retry of the report's delivery later.

Issues with e-mails being delivered to internal addresses but not external ones? Check that your SMTP E-mail Robot settings are properly authenticating to your SMTP server: most SMTP servers will accept e-mail for local delivery without authentication, but won't relay mail to other servers for unauthenticated users.