Flash Reports

Flash reports give you the option to schedule reports on a daily, weekly, or monthly frequency and distribute them, via email, to users manually added to the Owner, Editor, or Viewer role. Flash reports are not sent to the Report Administrators and Report Owners system-managed groups. Vault sends a link with instant access to the most recent cached report results in Vault without needing to rerun the report, as well as the date and time the report ran. You can also set flash reports to include the report in the email itself, allowing recipients to access it without logging into Vault. Additionally, Vault does not require that flash report recipients have view permissions on the report’s underlying object records or documents to view the cached results. Flash reports use the Vault Time Zone.

Scheduling Flash Reports

When scheduling a flash report, you can determine the frequency, the preferred start time, and notification preferences. Note that the scheduling action is not available for reports with prompts and including the report in an email is not available for matrix reports.

To schedule a flash report:

  1. Select Schedule Flash Report from the report’s Actions menu to open the Schedule Flash Report dialog.
  2. Select the scheduling frequency from the Run report picklist.
  3. Select the scheduled start time from the Preferred Start Time picklist. Note that flash reports do not honor daylight savings time.
  4. Select a notification preference from the Email and Vault notification preferences picklist. When you select the Only send when at least one record is returned option, Vault only sends a notification when the report returns at least one record.
  5. Optional: Select the Include report in email checkbox (described below) if you want to include a copy of the report in the flash report’s email.
  6. Optional: Clear the Collapse report groups in email checkbox (described below).
  7. Optional: Clear the Allow flash report to be refreshed checkbox if you do not want to allow users to refresh flash reports.
  8. Click OK.

You must add users to a flash report by manual assignment for them to receive the flash report and related notifications via email.

Dynamic Distribution to Grouped Users

You can distribute flash reports grouped by user fields to the associated users. Users only see the report results associated with them.

While scheduling a flash report, select Send to users in Group By user field in the Email and Vault notification preferences drop-down to distribute the report.

Users can click the link in the Vault notification email to access the report results associated with them. However, users cannot access the report from the Reports tab.

The email link expires when Vault reruns the flash report. If users click an expired link, Vault opens the newest report results associated with them.

Users can also export their report results.

Flash Reports Preview

When you select the Include report in email checkbox, Vault includes an HTML copy of the flash report in the email notification. This allows users to view the report directly from their email or access the report in Vault.

With the Collapse report groups in email setting enabled, the HTML version of the flash report sent via email will only show group-level data in the report. Users will not be able to expand the group to see all report results without logging into Vault.

Modifying Flash Reports

Flash reports’ Lifecycle State column is set to Flash Report to differentiate from standard reports. You can select Schedule from the report’s Actions menu to modify the scheduling details of a flash report, or to unschedule it. To unschedule a flash report, click Unschedule in the Schedule Flash Report dialog. Only the following users can modify or edit flash reports:

Refreshing Flash Reports

When enabled, you can click Refresh in the report viewer to ensure you are seeing the most accurate and recent data. When you refresh a flash report, Vault runs the flash report job as the user who created the report and updates the Last Ran time. Refreshing a flash report updates report data for all users, but does not send the associated email notification. When enabled, clicking Refresh on a dashboard also refreshes the flash report.

When creating a flash report, you can also click Run in the report builder after you save the report. This runs the flash report job.

Flash Report Job

When you schedule a flash report, Vault automatically creates and adds a new job to the Job Definitions and Job Status pages. From the Job Definitions page, you can make any necessary changes and update the job status. You cannot create a flash report job type from the Job Definitions page.

You must have the Objects: Reports: Edit and Dashboards and Reports: Schedule Reports permissions to schedule a flash report. Any users assigned to the Owner role for that Report object record can also edit the flash report. Both the user who schedules the flash report and the user who initially created the report have the Owner role.

The results of the flash report are based on the permissions of the user who scheduled the report (displayed in the Runs As field on the report). This user must have an active Vault account in order for the flash report to send. It is recommended to update the Runs As user on flash reports as part of the user offboarding process. To change the Runs As user, another user must unschedule, and then reschedule the flash report.

Limitations

  • A single Vault cannot have more than 400 flash reports
  • Vault limits flash report emails to 3 MB
  • Flash reports timeout after 2 hours
  • Vault will not send flash report emails for reports with over 10,000 unique users. If the limit is exceeded, the user who scheduled the report will receive an email notification.
  • Formula fields that display icons are not supported in flash report emails. However, alternative text applied to the icon displays in the email.