Running & scheduling

A template or saved report is a definition; running it turns that definition into an actual document filled with current data. You can run a report whenever you need it, or schedule it to run on its own.

Running on demand

To run a report you supply its parameters — typically the scope it should cover, such as a project, a specific release, a baseline to report against, or a date range. The report is then generated from live data within that scope. Because the data is pulled at run time, every run reflects the current state, so a report you run before a meeting is up to date the moment you produce it.

Reporting against a baseline

Many regulated reports need to reflect a fixed point rather than the present — what the work looked like at a milestone or a release. Running a report against a baseline produces exactly that: the report as of the captured snapshot, so you can document a past state precisely and compare it to now.

Scheduling

Some reports are needed regularly — a weekly status, a monthly compliance summary, a recurring audit extract. Rather than remembering to run these, you schedule them to generate automatically on a cadence. A scheduled report runs on its own and is available when it’s due, so routine reporting happens without anyone having to trigger it.

Keeping output current and consistent

Between on-demand runs for ad-hoc needs and schedules for routine ones, your reporting stays both current and consistent: the same templates, run against live data, on the rhythm your process needs. What you do with the generated report — exporting it to Word, Excel, or PDF, controlling who can run and see it, and signing it as a regulatory document — is covered in part two of this section.