Distribute reports automatically based on an external event

Sometimes reports are not distributed until a specific event occurs. For example, in a university, reports might only be sent once instructors have submitted their grades, or, in the corporate world, reports are not sent until employee evaluations are submitted.

Blue will perform automatic updates on a regular schedule with all external sources which can then trigger certain actions as explained below.

Requirements

Project - The report is for a subject-based project definition.
Report Type and Options - Select the following:
a. Individual
b. Distributed
c. Automatic Update
d. Update Viewers automatically from project group definition
Datasource - Make sure a date/time field in your subject datasource exists and is empty. This field will contain the time stamp of when the evaluations are submitted. This article will refer to this field as "eval_submit".

NOTE

The eval_submit field must be empty by default. It will be populated with the subject submission date when the evaluations are submitted. It can not have 'null' as a value.

REMINDER

Verify that your datasource has a date/time field.

Navigate to the Blue Administration Console - Datasources
Select Edit next to your subject datasource
Go to Data and select Edit next to the subject data block
Review the fields

Consult Manually update demographics for a published project for more information on updating a datasource.

Steps

Once all requirements have been verified, configure the distribution conditions for the new report.

Go to Reports
Locate and select the report
Navigate to Distribution - Start Date
Select the first radio button and set it to: + 0 days from Subject(Datasource) - "eval_submit"
Select Apply
Set the End date
Navigate to Publish
Set the Publish and Expiry dates for the Report
Select Generate
Select Validate and make sure there are no errors
Select Publish

Results

Every morning at 2am the report's automatic update will verify the "eval_submit" field of the subject. If the date field is zero days from today, it will send an email to the report viewers with the access to the report.