Report Writer uses the Windows Task Scheduler to run certain reports at certain times. For example, you may have a report named Daily Activities that you want emailed to someone every morning at 7:00 am.

Creating a new schedule requires email settings to be set in the Options dialog. If they aren't, you get a warning message and the Schedule Wizard doesn't open.

To schedule one or more reports, choose Schedule from the New menu to bring up the Schedule Wizard. Note that depending on how security is set up, the Schedule Wizard may not be available to all users.

In Step 1, specify the name to assign to the schedule, the starting date and time for the schedule, whether the schedule ends or not, and if so, the ending date. Select how often the schedule is run: daily, weekly, monthly, or monthly - day of month. For a daily schedule, choose how many days apart the schedule runs, such as every 2 days, whether the schedule should repeat, and if so after how many minutes it should repeat. If you specify that it should repeat, you can also specify the duration for the repeat interval.

For a weekly schedule, specify how many weeks apart the schedule runs (such as every 3 weeks) and on which days to run the schedule.

For a monthly schedule, specify which date of every month (for example, the 15th) and which months the schedule runs on.

For a monthly - day of month schedule, select which day of the month (such as the second Monday) and which months the schedule runs on.

In step 2, choose which reports the schedule should run. Like the Reports Explorer, the Available reports list is organized by tag. To hide or show the reports for a tag, click the tag bar.

Click the button to add a report to the Selected reports list. Click the button to remove a report from the Selected reports list.

Only reports without ask-at-runtime filter conditions are displayed, since a schedule can't stop to ask for the values of such a report.

In step 3, choose each report and specify the export options for the report. You'll also be able to choose the Output type of the schedule, where you can either Email or Upload (FTP) the report.

A schedule has to run under a specific Windows account. If your administrator set up the credentials to use for schedules in the Options dialog, Step 4 doesn't appear in the Schedule Wizard. Otherwise, in step 4, enter the login name and password of the account to run the schedule under. You may need to specify the domain using "DOMAIN\USERNAME."

When you are finished specifying the settings for the schedule, click the Finish button. The report runs automatically on a regular basis according to the schedule settings.

The Scheduler is automatically displayed after saving a schedule; you can also access it by choosing Scheduler from the menu. The Scheduler shows the schedules you created (unless you are an administrator user, in which case you can see all schedules), including when they run and which reports are output.

Each schedule in the list has one of four status icons beside the name of the schedule.

• - The schedule ran successfully.

• - An error occurred when the schedule last ran.

• - The schedule hasn't been run for the first time yet.

• - The schedule is currently running.

To edit a schedule, click the button beside the schedule name; that launches the Schedule Wizard so you can change any settings you wish.

To delete a schedule, click the button beside the schedule name.

Schedule settings are stored in XML files in the Schedules subdirectory of the App_Data subdirectory of the Report Writer program folder. There is one XML file per user, containing all of the schedules created by that user.