Questions about Emailing Reports

[mhammond]

Apologies if this went in the wrong forum - please move if needed. I searched and couldn't come up with an exact answer to my queries.

1. When setting up email report settings, we have the option to set schedules. However, the tutorial doesn't explain what happens if you don't select ANY schedule. My question is, what happens? Does it just email, then, after every scheduled scan of your corporate assets as a whole?....or does it just do NOTHING until you pick a schedule?

2. Is there a way to edit the default message "This message was automatically sent by the LANSweeper alert reporting engine...." ?

[Esben_D]

The best way to create real time alerts or reports is by crafting a good report.

Reports will not be emailed if they are empty. This means you can schedule a report to be sent every minute if you want, but in reality it will only send the report if it contains any results.
This is where the report crafting comes in. If you make sure that the report only contains a value when you need the report, you'll get it quickly.

An example would be a report with unauthorized software X installed on it that were scanned in the last 10 minutes.
Since this report should always be empty, it should never be sent. Once someone installs the software, you'll get an email. If you have your report mailing set to an interval of 10 minutes, you'll only get the email once, because the next time the last scan will be more than 10 minutes ago.

[KrisNelson]

You could get crazy and use the 'Directory' reporting. Have that run every few hours and then set up a task sequence that runs along the same interval and parse through your report and then email you when it sees the things you generally look for.

I use this type of reporting to email our helpdesk system for things like failing hard drives and dying batteries.

-Kris

[CyberCitizen]

I have added our printers in the scanning targets to be scanned every two hours, I then run the Printer almost out of toner report every day at 9:00am. I did set our report to be at 30 percent so I can monitor it as it gets closer (new printer supplier and toner delivery have taken some time), but you could set it to something like 5 percent if you have the toner on hand and replace it yourselves etc.

[mhammond]

CyberCitizen wrote:
I have added our printers in the scanning targets to be scanned every two hours, I then run the Printer almost out of toner report every day at 9:00am. I did set our report to be at 30 percent so I can monitor it as it gets closer (new printer supplier and toner delivery have taken some time), but you could set it to something like 5 percent if you have the toner on hand and replace it yourselves etc.

I kind of do this already with the default reports that show up on the LANSweeper Dashboard. I've set the global default @ 5% because each one of our sites has toner on-hand. I'll then on occasion run the report manually to see if anything at our immediate sites needs review.

It's just too bad there can't be an automation trigger somehow programmed into the software. Maybe I'm too #FirstWorldProblems 😛

[fjca]

I had a similar need and what I did was configure a new schedule, I've named InvalidDate, with a start date on the past, with execution mode "once", and Interval None.

Some of my one-off reports are bound to it, and when I need them, I just use the "Send Now" button to send it...

I'm not sure if it will work on a depyment scenario, but you can try it...

[mhammond]

Well dang.

I was hoping use the info to configure an at-will email report. By that I mean, upon successful completion of scanning an asset, depending on the report, it will email right away.

So, for the case of low toner reports, once a printer is successfully scanned, it triggers a scheduled report to email the group. The 'schedule' takes over and emails based on the selected timeframe (let's just say once a week, every Monday afternoon). Then once the toner has been replaced, the scan will run and see that there so longer any 'low toner' warning so it literally STOPS the schedule, until the next time it's low.

Additionally, what's nice about the help desk solution we are using, is that you can email the HD at its given address and the email generates a help desk ticket. It would be nice to have more control of the triggers of the report so we could implement ticket generation from the LS reports (it doesn't always have to be toner - it's just an example).

[Esben_D]

1. If you don't select a schedule, I don't think it will do anything.
2. Unfortunately, no.