Scheduling your first report

Overview

This tutorial shows you how to schedule your first report in Tenant Manager, using the User report as the example. You set the schedule, format, and recipients, switch the report on, create a copy with Generate now, and check the result in Generation history. The License report and the Cost report work the same way.

Business value

A scheduled report puts current license figures in the right inbox or channel without anyone opening Tenant Manager. Running Generate now before the first scheduled run confirms that the schedule, format, and recipients work as you expect.

Prerequisites

Connect a tenant and wait for its first sync to finish, because a report uses the data from the last sync. To send reports to a channel, set it up first under Settings > Notification channels. See Managing notification channels.

Required permissions

You need Manage on Reports to configure a report, switch it on or off, and generate it on demand. You need Read on Reports to open the page and read Generation history. Owner and Contributor have both, Reader has Read only, and a custom role has whatever its Reports switches allow. See Roles and permissions in Tenant Manager.

How it works

This section explains what the User report contains, when it runs, and how it reaches your recipients.

The User report lists every licensed user in a tenant with their account status, last activity, licenses, and monthly cost. It is written for the people who approve license removals. You set up reports for one tenant at a time, because tenant groups have no Reports page.

A report runs on a weekly or monthly schedule. A weekly report runs on the days of the week you choose. A monthly report runs on the days of the month you choose, and in a month without a selected day it runs on the last day. Every selected day runs at every selected time, in half-hour steps, in the Background activity time zone from General settings. When you first open Configure for a report, it starts as weekly, on Monday, at 09:00, as a PDF file, with no channels selected. The switch of a report that you have never configured stays unavailable until you configure and save it.

A report uses the data from the last sync and does not read Microsoft 365 when it runs. A tenant syncs every 6 hours. If the tenant's connection is disconnected or its sync is failing, the run is recorded as Abandoned. Nothing is created or sent, and Generation history says why.

Tenant Manager sends a link to the file and never attaches it. An email or channel message shows the report name, the tenant, the format, and a preview of the first rows. Every run also appears in Generation history, which keeps the newest 50 runs and offers the file for download.

Steps

You schedule the User report for one tenant and then check that it works. To start, select the tenant in the tree view, and then go to License management > Reports.

Configure the schedule and delivery

This procedure sets how long a user can be idle before the report counts them as inactive, the file format, when the User report runs, and who receives it.

On the User report row, open the actions menu in the Actions column and select Configure. The Configure dialog opens with a one-line title, Configure - User report.
Tick Download report from notifications at the top of the dialog if you want a Download report button in every message. The link works for 7 days. To add a logo to a PDF report, select Branding settings on the same row. See Reports in Tenant Manager.
Under Report settings, enter No activity for more than (days), the number of days without activity after which the report counts a user as inactive. The default is 90 days.
Choose the Format: PDF or Excel. The default is PDF. An Excel file has filters turned on.
Under Frequency settings, choose Select the interval: Weekly or Monthly.
Choose the Days of week or Days of month the report runs on, and then choose the Hours. Select All days or All hours to select every option.
Open Notification settings. On SaaS, enter one or more Recipient email address values. Separate addresses with commas to send each person their own email. Use semicolons to send one email to everyone. On private hosting, the recipient field is not shown, so use a notification channel instead.
Tick the channels that should receive the report.
Select Save. Tenant Manager confirms the save. If the report is switched off, the message also tells you that generation stays disabled until you switch it on.

A report can't be saved or generated until it has a notification channel or a recipient email address. While it has neither, a warning icon appears at the right of the Notification settings header, and its tooltip reads "At least one notification channel must be added." On private hosting, the switch of a report with no channel ticked is grayed out, and its tooltip reads "Configure this report first. Choose a notification channel, then enable it."

Switch the report on and generate a copy

This procedure starts the schedule and creates one copy of the report straight away.

In the first column of the User report row, select the switch.
Read the confirmation and select Continue. A message confirms the change.
Open the actions menu and select Generate now.
Read the confirmation and select Continue.
Wait while the menu item reads Queued or Generating. The page updates on its own.

Note:

Generate now uses the data from the last sync and does not start a sync. You cannot generate the report again while a run is queued or running.

Read Generation history

This procedure shows the result of the run and lets you open the file.

Open the actions menu on the User report row and select Generation history.
Find the newest run at the top of the list and check its Status. A healthy run shows Succeeded. Hover over the badge to read any issues.
In the Notifications column, select View details to see which destinations received the report.
In the File column, select Download.
Open the file. In the Excel file, use the filters on the Rows sheet to narrow the list, for example to inactive users. In the PDF, start with the Report summary page.

From now on, the report runs on its schedule and every run appears in Generation history. To schedule the License report or the Cost report, repeat the same steps on its row.

Troubleshooting

These are the problems you are most likely to meet when you schedule a report for the first time.

Generate now is disabled
Cause: the report is switched off, it has no notification channel or recipient email address, or a run is already queued or running.
Fix: if the tooltip reads "Enable report generation to generate this report", select the switch in the first column and confirm. If it reads "Select a notification channel or enter a recipient email address in Configure first", open Configure and add one. Otherwise wait for the current run to finish in Generation history.
The recipient field is disabled with the message "Email sending is not set up for this deployment."
Cause: outbound email is not set up for this deployment.
Fix: select a notification channel in Notification settings instead, or set up outbound email.
A warning note about a failed sync appears above the grid
Cause: the last sync of the tenant failed, so reports on the tenant are abandoned until a sync finishes without issues.
Fix: follow the note. Wait a few minutes and select Sync, or update the client secret in Edit tenant and then select Sync. See Syncing a Microsoft 365 tenant.
A run shows Abandoned
Cause: the tenant's connection was disconnected or its sync was failing when the report ran, so there was no current data to report.
Fix: fix the connection or sync, and then select Generate now. The next scheduled run uses the tenant again.
A run shows Succeeded with issues, or the File column shows Not stored
Cause: a destination could not be reached, or the file could not be saved for download.
Fix: hover over the Status badge to read the issues, and select View details in the Notifications column to see which destination failed.