Automated Printing of a Dashboard - or workaround to take a snapshot before month carries over

SammyMorey · 12/23/19

Hey all,

Hoping someone may be able to assist... We have dashboards that show the current live data and that automatically tick over as the months do and all the data changes.

It is working fabulously, except we want to be able to take a snapshot the moment before the month ticks over. That is at 11:59pm on the last day of the month.

As our main users are tucked up in bed at this time, we are hoping there is an automated way to do this?

Once it hits midnight all the data changes to be the new month. I could make the data have one day lag, but the business wants to be able to see the data as it currently stands, not the previous days data.

I have my fingers crossed someone has a work around or an idea to help us :)

Paul Newcome · 12/23/19

I am not sure of a way to capture the dashboard itself, but I do know that you can set up the sheets being used so that they send on a recurring basis which can be sent to the last day of the month at 11:00pm. Does that sound acceptable?

Andrée Starå · 12/23/19

Hi Sammy,

Is it the data that is important or the dashboard? I think that it might make sense to use a BI service to get the data as needed, or maybe it's possible to schedule a screenshot with a service. On Mac, we could probably use Automator to set it up.

Would any of those methods work/help?

I hope that helps!

Have a fantastic weekend & Happy Holidays!

Best,

Andrée Starå

Workflow Consultant / CEO @ WORK BOLD

Jose Manuel Montemayor · 01/05/20

I want to do the same thing. To automate a dashboard snapshot/ email to document the progress and changes on a weekly basis.

The workaround I found is to send a report as an attachment.

It’s not the same because you will lose any formatting from the dashboard.

Still, you can have all the information you want/need.

Here is how to set up the automation:

https://help.smartsheet.com/articles/516096-sharing-sending-reports

Kind regards,

Manuel Montemayor

Deepa SP · 06/30/20

Hi ,

I am looking for a similar capability. Not all my data in the dashboard are from reports. It would be good to have an option to send out the Dashboard in email format, just like the reports.

SammyMorey · 07/02/20

hey all thanks for your input - We have all the data in "interim" sheets and reports - but unfortunately we actually want a snapshot of the dashboard itself.

We have setup outlook reminders for someone in each team to print to a pdf on the last day of the month - but if this falls on a weekend we miss it.

:S - be great if smartsheet had some capability for this. I will add a product enhancement request.

Thanks so much

Tweetie · 01/05/22

Has there been update since the last comment that the function to automatically send a dashboard printout was not yet available?

Paul Newcome · 01/06/22

@Tweetie Not yet. One option for the reminders is to create a sheet and have an automation set up based on a date type column. You could then use a formula to output the last business day of the month. In the alert you send out to someone you could include the URL to the dashboard that needs captured.

Rey Mendez · 12/08/23

I have a similar need. I would love to automatically generate a weekly email that sends out the output from my dashboard to the project team. Is this something that Smartsheet can consider as part of their product roadmap?

Automated Printing of a Dashboard - or workaround to take a snapshot before month carries over

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