Scheduling investigative reports

You must save an investigative report as a Favorite before it can be scheduled to run at a later time or on a repeating cycle. When the scheduled report job runs, the resulting reports are compressed into zip files and sent via email to the recipients you designate. As you create scheduled jobs, consider whether your email server will be able to handle the size and quantity of the attached report files.

Scheduled report files are stored in the following directory:

<install_path>\webroot\Explorer\Other\

The default installation path is C:\Program Files (x86)\Websense\Web Security.

Note:

The reports saved from a repeating job use the same file name each time. If you want to save files for longer than a single cycle, be sure to change the file name or copy the file to another location.

Depending on the size and number of reports scheduled, this directory could become very large. Be sure to clear the directory periodically, eliminating unneeded report files.

For the best performance when running scheduled jobs, a minimum of 4G of RAM is recommended. Companies with large amounts of data should consider increasing to 8G or more.

Steps

  1. Save one or more reports as Favorites. (See Favorite investigative reports).
  2. Click Favorite Reports to display a list of reports saved as favorites.
    Note: If your organization uses delegated administration roles, this list does not include favorite reports saved by other administrators.
  3. Highlight up to 5 reports to run as part of the job.
  4. Click Schedule to create a scheduled report job, and then provide the information requested on the Schedule Report page.
    It is advisable to schedule report jobs on different days or at different times, to avoid overloading the Log Database and slowing performance for logging and interactive reporting.
    Field Description
    Recurrence Select the frequency (Once, Daily, Weekly, Monthly) for running the report job.
    Start date Choose the day of the week or calendar date for running the job the first (or only) time.
    Run time Set the time of day for running the job.
    Email to

    Use the Additional email address field to add the appropriate addresses to this list.

    Highlight one or more email addresses to receive the reports in the job. (Be sure to deselect any that should not receive the reports.)

    Highlight an email address and click Delete to remove it from the list.
    Additional email address

    Enter an email address, and then click Add to put it on the Email to list.

    The new email address is automatically highlighted with the other selected email addresses.
    Customize email subject and body text

    Mark this check box to customize your email notification subject line and body text.

    If this box is not checked, the default subject and body text are used.
    Email subject

    Enter the text to appear as the email subject line when scheduled reports are distributed.

    The default email subject reads: Investigative Reports scheduled job
    Email text

    Enter text to be added to the email message for distributing scheduled reports.

    The email reads as shown below, with your text in place of <CUSTOM TEXT>.

    Report scheduler generated the attached file or files on <date time>.

    <CUSTOM TEXT>

    To view the generated report(s), click on the following link(s).

    Note: The link will not work if the recipient does not have access to the web server from which the job was sent.
    Scheduled job name Assign a unique name for the scheduled job. The name identifies this job in the Job Queue. See Managing scheduled investigative reports jobs.
    Output format

    Choose the file format for the scheduled reports:

    PDF: Portable Document Format files are viewed in Adobe Reader.

    Excel: Excel spreadsheet files are viewed in Microsoft Excel.
    Date range

    Set the date range to be covered by reports in this job.

    All Dates: all available dates in the Log Database.

    Relative: Choose a time period (Days, Weeks, or Months) and the specific period to include (This, Last, Last 2, and so on).

    Specific: set specific dates or a date range for the reports in this job.
       
       
       
       
       
  5. Click Next to display the Schedule Confirmation page.
  6. Click Save to save your selections and go to the Job Queue page (see Managing scheduled investigative reports jobs).