Schedules allow you to create and deliver snapshots on a regular basis. This is useful to get regular updates on how your websites are improving over time. When a schedule runs, it will create a new snapshot saved inside your Silktide platform.
A scheduled snapshot must start with a template, so if you haven’t already got one that suits your needs, go and create a template first.
To start creating a scheduled snapshot, head to the Dashboards screen in the top-right corner. From there, you can select Schedules. The Schedules screen will have a New schedule button just above the table of schedules.
Template selection
The first step in creating a schedule is to select the template that will be used. The template will define the text, graphs, and tables shown in the snapshot created by the schedule.
Website selection and date filtering
Depending on how the template was set up (One website, many websites, etc.), you’ll need to choose the website(s) you want to be included in the snapshot. You can also set a filter for how much historical data should be shown in the snapshot, as some widgets are set up to show score values over time. You can set this filter to be some number of days, weeks, months, or even years depending on your needs.
Schedule name
To identify the schedule, it should be given a name. This will make it easier to find the schedule in the future. By default, this is set to the name of the template followed by "schedule".
Email notification
If desired, schedules can send an email notification when they run. In the Assignees section, click the “No-one” link, and select the appropriate user(s) or role(s) from the list. If you want to send your scheduled dashboard to non-Silktide users, add their email address into the “Non-Silktide users” field, with each email address being placed on a new line.
You can optionally personalize the email contents and subject. You can see what the email will look like by selecting the Preview email button.
Schedule frequency
Choose how often the schedule should be run and emailed in the “Schedule” settings. This can be set to a daily, weekly, monthly, or even yearly frequency. Customize this by using the number field, for example, you might want a quarterly scheduled dashboard, so in the following example it would be set up to run every 3 months starting from the 1st of January.
Schedule permissions
The final option is to state who has access to see and edit this schedule:
Everyone: All users within the account
Just me: Only the creator of the schedule
Custom: This will provide a table that can be used to select specific users on the account. This also allows users to be given specific permission to see or admin the schedule as needed
Don’t forget, if you’ve selected in the individual user or role settings that they can see all dashboards, this won’t overwrite that permission. If you don’t want a user or role to see a specific dashboard, you’ll need to uncheck ‘See all dashboards’ in the user or role settings.
Once all of the fields have been filled, confirm your choices by selecting the purple Schedule button at the bottom of the screen. A green confirmation pop-up will appear in the bottom corner of the screen, and you'll be directed back to the Schedules screen. Your newly created schedule will appear in the list of schedules on the Schedules screen.
Viewing and editing a schedule
From the Schedules screen, selecting the name of a schedule will show a copy of the snapshot as if the schedule was going to run today. There is also an Edit button in the top-right corner of this page that you can use to edit the settings of the schedule. Options to Print (this will allow you to ‘Print to PDF’ too), and view the dashboard in Fullscreen are also available at the top of the page:
