Create Favorite reports

Topic 50176 | Investigative Reporting Quick Start | Updated 22-Oct-2013


Applies to:	Websense Web Filter, Web Security, Web Security Gateway, and Web Security Gateway Anywhere, v7.5 - v7.8

You can save most investigative reports as Favorites. This includes reports you generate by drilling down, standard reports, and detail reports that you have modified to meet your specific needs. You can run a Favorite report at any time, or schedule it to run on specific days and times.

Not all delegated administrators have permission to save and schedule Favorite reports. If you don't see the Favorite Reports link, talk to your Super Administrator for access.

Save a report as a Favorite

Generate an investigative report with the desired format and information.

Click the Favorite Reports link in the toolbar at the top of the screen.

Enter a descriptive name for the report. The name may contain letters, numbers and underscore characters (_). No blanks or other special characters can be used.

Click Add. The report name is added to the list of Favorites.

Run a Favorite report immediately

Once a report has been added as a favorite, it is easy to run it again:

Select a report from the list, and then click Run Now.

Specify the date range that you want to include in the report, and then click Display Report.

When the report is complete, the results are displayed in the content pane.

Schedule a Favorite report to run at a future time

You can also schedule Favorite reports to run later, or on a regular schedule:

If you are not already on the Favorite Reports page, click the Favorite Reports link.

Highlight up to 5 reports to schedule as part of the same job. (You can review the status of scheduled report jobs on the Investigative Reports > Job Queue page.)

Click Schedule. You are prompted to specify when the report will be run, how the report will be delivered, and how long a time period the report will cover.

Provide the following information to schedule the report, and then click Next:


Field	Description
Recurrence	How often (Once, Daily, Weekly, Monthly) the report job runs.
Start Date	The day of the week or calendar date the job first runs.
Run Time	The time of day the job runs.
Email to	Recipients of the completed report. Deselect any email addresses that should not be used. The report is sent only to highlighted email addresses.
Additional Email Addresses	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	Indicates whether default or custom text is used when the completed report is sent to email recipients.
Email Subject	Enter custom text for the subject line of the email message containing the completed reports. The default subject reads: "Investigative Reports scheduled job."
Email Text	Enter custom body text for the email message containing the completed reports. The email reads as follows: 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.
Schedule Job Name	Assign a unique name for the scheduled job. The name identifies this job in the Job Queue.
Output Format	Choose the file format for the scheduled reports: (Adobe) PDF or (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.

A summary page lists the scheduled job details, as well as any warnings. Click Save to schedule the report, or click Previous to make changes.

Clicking Save takes you to the Job Queue page, where you can:

Review scheduled jobs.

Make changes to scheduled jobs.

Delete scheduled jobs. (This does not delete the Favorite report.)

Find status and error information for jobs in progress and recently completed, or for jobs that could not be completed.

The Job Queue page can also be accessed from most investigative reports pages.

When a scheduled report is run, the completed report is saved in the following directory on the machine that hosts the investigative reports tool:

<install_path>\webroot\Explorer\<recipient_name>\

By default, the <install_path> is:

v7.5: C:\Program Files\Websense\bin\ or /opt/Websense/bin/

v7.6 and later: C:\Program Files (x86)\Websense\Web Security\bin\

<recipient_name> is the portion of the recipient (Email to) email address before the @ symbol. If the report has multiple recipients, the reports are saved in a directory called Other.

Tips

Recipients must have read access to the report directory to open the report.

All reports saved from a repeating job use the same file name. 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, the Explorer directory could become very large. Super Administrators should clear the directory periodically, eliminating unneeded report files.