Delivering JustAsk content via email

Creating an email delivery

1. Configure the delivery settings

1. Navigate to a published dashboard.
2. Click File > Deliveries & Alerts. The delivery options will display on the left side of the page.
3. Fill in the following:
   • Delivery — Select Schedule or Alert.
   • Send — Select the content to be delivered.
   • Destination — Select Email.
   • Name — Enter a name for the delivery.

If creating an alert, use the Alert tab to define the conditions that must be met to trigger the delivery.

2. Configure the delivery schedule

In this step, you’ll define the cadence for the delivery:

• For schedules, this determines when JustAsk will deliver the specified content to the destination
• For alerts, this tells JustAsk when to check if the current query results meet the conditions required to send the delivery

Schedules can be defined using the visual options or with cron:

Visual schedule builder

Use the UI options (Daily, Weekly, etc.) to select a time period.

By default, schedules are set to send in the local timezone of the delivery creator’s computer. Use the Times are in drop down to change the timezone.

Custom cron schedule (Advanced)

A cron expression is a string that describes the individual details of a schedule:

Order	Unit	Allowed values	Allowed special characters
1	minute	0-59	* , - /
2	hour	0-23	* , - /
3	day of month	1-31	* , - / L W ?
4	month	1-12 or JAN-DEC	* , - /
5	day of week	1-7 or SUN-SAT	* , - / L W ?
6	year	any	* , - /

Using cron, you can create schedules like the following:

At 9:00 AM every day

0 9 ? * * *

At 6:30AM on the last day of the month

30 6 L * ? *

At 8:45 AM every day, Monday through Friday

45 8 ? * MON-FRI *

JustAsk uses Amazon Web Services’ (AWS) syntax for cron expressions. Refer to the AWS documentation for more information. By default, the most frequent you can configure a schedule is hourly.

Tip

If your organization has AI enabled, you can use the AI cron generator to create cron expressions from natural language. Click the sparkle icon next to the cron input field and describe your desired schedule, such as “every weekday at 9am” or “first Monday of each month at noon.”

Tip

Schedule send timezone may be different than query run timezone. For example, if your Database timezone is UTC with no other timezone conversion settings and you set your schedule to send at 12:00 PM PST, the query will execute at 8:00 PM UTC.

3. Select format and filter options

In the Dashboard or Chart tab, you can:

• Select the format of the content, such as PNG, PDF, XLSX, or CSV
• Lightly customize the contents and layout, such as expanding tables to include up to 1,000 rows, hiding filter values, or arranging tiles in a single column.
• Set filter or control values for the delivery. Some formats will have additional customization options. PDF formats, for example, will allow you to specify the orientation and page size for the PDF.

For dashboard deliveries, the default filters and controls will automatically be applied upon creation. Subsequent default filter value updates will not change the filter values set for existing deliveries.

Tip

You can use filters to customize content for different recipients! For example, set a filter to A in a scheduled delivery to recipient A, and in another scheduled delivery to recipient B, set a filter to B.

PNG deliveries

If you select the PNG (image) format, how the image is included with the email will depend on the image’s size:

Deliveries 2MB or less

If 2MB or less, the image will be included inline in the email:

Deliveries larger than 2MB

If larger than 2MB, the image will be included as an attachment. JustAsk takes this approach to prevent failed deliveries, as some email providers limit how large inline images can be.

4. Configure email settings

To finish setting up the delivery, click the Email tab and fill in the following:

Recipients

Add one or more recipients. Recipients can be other members of your JustAsk organization or non-users, such as a contractor or external stakeholder. You can also add JustAsk user groups as recipients.

When adding recipients, note that:

• When existing JustAsk users are added as recipients there are no checks on whether or not each of those users have system access (connection or content permissions) to the content being scheduled. This means users could potentially receive content that they do not otherwise have access to in the JustAsk application.
• When non-users are added as recipients - that is, when a user with the recipient’s email can’t be matched to an JustAsk user - JustAsk creates an email-only user. These accounts are created when a delivery is saved to allow you to monitor scheduler usage and related metadata.
• If a user belongs to multiple user groups, they will only receive one delivery.
• If an embedded user adds their email as a recipient and a matching JustAsk user can’t be found, the user will be treated as the recipient. This includes their user attributes, which makes this useful when enabling Personalize delivery with recipient user attributes.

Personalize delivery with the recipient’s user attributes

If enabled, the content of the delivery will be personalized using the recipients’ user attributes. Otherwise, the delivery owner’s user attributes will be used.

For example, you could use personalization to deliver a dashboard to sales managers that only displays quarterly sales data for their region.

Note

Keep in mind that enabling this option doesn’t impact who receives this delivery, only the contents of the delivery.

Subject and body

Tip

Email subjects and bodies can include Mustache references, including user attributes, allowing you to create dynamic, personalized content for recipients.

Enter a subject and a body message for the email delivery.

5. Test the delivery

If you want to test the delivery before saving, click the Test Now button in the bottom left corner of the page. This will send the dashboard/chart to the destination using the current settings. For example, using Test Now would send the delivery to all Recipients.

Note

The Test Now button will be unavailable for alerts if the Condition type is Results have changed or Results have stayed the same. A workaround is to use the Send Now option to manually trigger the delivery, which is available once the delivery has been saved.

Save the alert and then click the icon to display the Send Now option. This will initiate a check on the alert condition - if the condition isn’t met, the delivery will show as successful but not send anything.

6. Save the delivery

When finished, click Save to create the delivery.

Subscribing to email deliveries

If you aren’t currently a recipient of an email delivery, you can subscribe if you have the ability to view the schedule. In a published dashboard, navigate to File > Deliveries & Alerts and then click the Subscribe link under the schedule:

Note

In an embedded context, users with a defined embed entity will only see schedules created by users in the same embed entity. Embed users that don’t have a defined entity property will only see their schedules.