This article provides an overview of the Recurring reports feature in the Isentia platform. Recurring Reports deliver your media items on a schedule you’ve set directly to your inbox in an easy-to-understand list or table format.
What are recurring reports?
Recurring reports automatically deliver an easy-to-understand breakdown of media items from your chosen topics to you and anyone else in your organisation.
These reports are delivered on a schedule that you control and provide greater flexibility in allowing you to understand your latest coverage outside of the Isentia platform.
With recurring reports, you can create new reports, control who else receives the reports you create, and set a schedule so that your reports are delivered at a time that suits you.
How to create recurring reports
To create a new recurring report, select +Create Recurring Report to access the recurring report builder.
How To: Build a quick recurring report
When you are short on time and need to build a report quickly, follow these steps:
- Select your recipients – Who you want to receive the report (Receive a copy of your report by selecting Send me a copy of this report).
- Set your delivery schedule – Choose when your report is sent to you and any other recipients (use multiple schedules for more control over when your report is delivered)
- Choose your topics – Select which of your topics your report curates media items from.
- Save your report – Finalise your report and return to the Isentia platform reports page.
Recurring report builder tools and options
There are several other options available in the recurring report builder that give you greater control to customise your report
Report Name
The title you give your report is your way of identifying which report you are receiving. The title you choose will also be the subject line of the email when your report is sent through to you, so we recommend a report name that is simple and easy to understand.
Note: If you don’t customise the title by default, your report will be titled “Isentia Report”.
Recipients
Using the recurring report recipient settings, you can control who receives your recurring report each time it is delivered, whether it’s just you or other team members.
Easily select from a list of other users in your organisation or manually add the email addresses of other recipients needing to receive the report.
Note: The recipient field has a character limit of 5000. If you need to send to more recipients, we suggest using distribution groups or email groups.
Schedule
The schedule you set is when you (and any others) will receive your report. There are several schedule options to ensure you receive your report when you need it.
Daily
Set the same delivery schedule for each day of the week. Choose to receive your report at either a set time each day (the At option) or regular intervals(the Every option) throughout the day (for example: every 45 minutes)
You can also set a window for your intervals to ensure your report is delivered at your chosen intervals during the window you need it to (for example, every 60 minutes between 9 am – and 5 pm).
Specific Days
Allows you to set customised delivery schedules for individual days. This gives you greater flexibility to tailor the delivery of your report to different workdays and schedules throughout the week (for example, Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, at 9 am).
Note: If you do select specific days, your report will contain content delivered to your topics from the last send.
Multiple schedules
Multiple schedules give you even more control over the delivery of your recurring reports. You can set different delivery schedules for different days. To add another schedule to your report, select the +Add a schedule option.
Topics
Topics will form the base of your report and determine which media items you see in your report when it is delivered to you.
The recurring report builder allows you to select your topics from the list of topics in your account shown in the drop-down option.
Appearance
Recurring reports can be tailored to your requirements, including how your report looks and how the media items it contains are displayed. The appearance settings allow you to customise how your report will look when delivered to your inbox.
Format
Select which type of recurring report you want to build and which format you want your report delivered in. Your report can be formatted as a list or as a table split into columns, each containing relevant details for an individual media item.
The functionalities and options available in the two report formats differ slightly, so it’s important to choose the format that matches your requirements.
Logo
Personalise your report by including a logo of your choosing. Your logo must be in .png., .jpg, or .gif, file type and must not exceed dimensions of 215px (w) x 120px (h). If you choose not to upload a custom logo, the Isentia logo will display by default.
Banner
Add to the visual experience of your recurring reports by adding a custom banner image to the top of your report.
Banner images can be .png, .jpg, or .gif file type, and the recommended banner image size is 600px (w) x 180 (h). If an image wider than 600px is uploaded it will be adjusted to the recommended size which may impact how your image is displayed.
If you don’t add a custom banner image then only the logo you’ve selected or the default Isentia logo will be displayed.
Section Links
Add links to your report that allow your recipients to instantly jump from the top of the report to a section that is of interest to them.
Section links will automatically generate based on the sections within a report, and how media items are grouped together.
Example: If you group the media items in your report by media type, the section links will display each of the media types.
Up to 15 section links will be displayed in each report, if there are more than 15 sections within your report, then the first 15 will display links.
Colour options
Personalise your report with a custom colour scheme. Add any colour to customise your section and media links, and the section dividers in your report.
Select your custom colours by either adding a hex code of a chosen colour or by selecting a colour using the colour picker shown. If no custom colours are selected by default, the Isentia colour scheme will be applied.
Display Options
Display options allow you to customise how media items in your recurring report appear. Options include additional item details for each piece of media content, options for syndicated media items, and showing highlighted keywords and automated sentiment scores.
The options for including and excluding display options and additional metadata differ between list and table format reports. We’ve detailed below which options are available for which report format.
All media types
Content
Control how much information is shown for each of the media items included in your report. Choose to display the headline of an item, the headline and the related summary, or the headline and the full text based on the level of detail you want the recipients of your report to see.
Note: Headline and full-text options are unavailable when selecting the table format report type.
Syndicates
Choose how syndicated media items are displayed in your recurring report. Select from one of the options to exclude syndicated items and details, include syndicated details on the parent media item, or have each syndicated media item listed individually in your recurring report.
- Hide syndicates – Displays only the parent media item in your report and no other syndicated items or details of additional syndications.
- Show syndicates as 1 media item – Displays the “parent” media item in your report and will also include a list of the first three outlets the syndicated media item appeared in and a total number of additional syndications the media item received.
- Show syndicates as individual media items – Display all syndicates as individual media items in your report.
Note: For table-format reports, syndication options are limited to Show syndicates as 1 media item and Show syndicates as individual media items.
Syndicates – extra details
- We define the “parent” item as the first item captured by our system, with the earliest published date.
- If you choose the Show syndicates as an individual media items option, this may significantly increase the size of your recurring report if a media item receives many syndications.
Other display options – All media types
- Show Keywords – Displays related keywords for media items across all media types. (List format)
- Highlight keywords in displayed text – Displays related highlights in bold within item summaries and full text (List format)
- Show section or program – Details which section of a publication or program on a station the media item is generated from. Example: 18:00 News, General News. (List format)
- Show region/location – Includes metadata detailing from which geographic region or location a media item was generated. (List format)
- Show sentiment – Details the automated sentiment score for each media item (example: positive, negative, neutral). (List format)
- Show ASR – Includes attributed Advertising Space Rate (ASR) data for each media item. (List format)
- Show item ID – Includes the individual item ID for each media item. (List format)
If you group the media items in your report by topic, you’ll also see an option to Show repeated items. This option allows duplicate media items that appear in more than one of the topics in your report to be shown in each section of your report.
Display Options – Print
There are several display options that can be applied to Print media items:
- Show link to download all print items in the email (List and Table format) – includes a simple link that allows you to download all the Newspaper and magazine media items in your recurring report.
You can also include additional metadata for print items, such as Word count, page number, audience, photo, format, classification, and section (List format).
Display options – Broadcast
Include broadcast-specific metadata in your list format reports, including Duration, mentions, visuals, interviewees, audience, size, demographics
Display options – Online
Include the following online-specific metadata in your list format reports: unique daily visitors and word count.
Columns in table reports
If you choose to use the table format for your recurring report, you can select which columns and relevant data are displayed for each media item.
By default, the date, headline, and outlets for each media item will be displayed, but you can select up to 15 additional columns to also include.
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Standard columns
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Additional columns
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Audience
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ASR
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Duration
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Author
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Item ID
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Topic
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Item size (cm2)
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Colour
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Language
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Contains photo
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Media item type
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Keywords
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Page number
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Media outlet location
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Program/Section name
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Media outlet state
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Sentiment
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Syndication details
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Text link
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Unique daily visitors
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Advanced settings
Access even more options for more options to customise your recurring report, including Media type filter, grouping and sorting options, and setting an active timeframe for greater control over when your report is delivered to you.
Media type filter
The media type filter gives you greater control over which media items from the topics you’ve selected are included in your recurring report. Using this additional option, your report will only include media items that match the media types you’ve selected.
Grouping and sorting options
There are a number of grouping and sorting options available to ensure that the media items in your report are organized in a way that suits you.
By default, your media items will be sorted by date, but you can select from a list of different grouping and sorting options that suit your requirements, including sorting and grouping by media type, outlet, location, or sentiment.
Custom grouping
You can manually organise the media items in your report when choosing to group by topic or media type, giving you greater control over their organization.
To use custom grouping, select group by Topic or Media type and select Custom from the dropdown menu. Then, reorder your topics or individual media types into an order that suits you.
Click Done to finalise your custom grouping. It will be displayed in the grouping and sorting options.
Active time frame
Use the optional active time frame option for greater control over when your report is delivered. This option means you (and any other recipients) will only receive your report during the time frame you’ve selected.
To set an active time frame, select the +Add a time frame option and select the start date and end date that you want your email report to be active. Outside of this time frame, your report will be paused and not delivered to any recipients.
Attachment (Table format report)
When using the table format recurring report, you can choose to include an additional spreadsheet format report in your email report. This spreadsheet will include the same data displayed in the table embedded in the email containing your report.
To include the additional spreadsheet, select the Attach Excel format option in the advanced settings.
Finalising your report
Once you have finished setting up your recurring report, click Save to finish and exit the recurring report builder. If your report won’t save, check there are no errors being displayed. If there are errors being shown, it just means you’ve missed a requirement in setting up your report.
Once you’ve returned to the recurring reports page, your report is ready to go and will next be delivered to you based on the schedule you’ve set.
