Creating a report
A report collects the readings from the sensors you choose and emails them to the people you choose, on a schedule. This guide makes one from start to finish.
On this page
- What a report is
- Before you start
- Open the Reports page
- Step 1: Name it
- Step 2: Choose the sensors
- How often it is sent
- Who receives it
- Alerts: the part that is easy to miss
- The advanced section, and why to leave it alone
- Save it
- Changing, pausing or deleting a report
- Adding notes to a report that has already been sent
- Things that catch people out
- Related links
A report gathers up the readings from the sensors you choose over a period of time, and sends the result to the people you choose, on a schedule. Nobody has to remember to do anything.
A rule tells you the moment something goes wrong. A report tells you how things have been. They answer different questions, and most sites end up using both.
This guide is about making and changing a report. What the finished report contains, and how to read it, is a separate guide.
Have these ready:
- The sensors the report should cover.
- How often you want it: daily, weekly, or at the end of each month.
- The email address of everybody who should receive it.
You can save a report and come back to it later. Nothing is sent until the schedule comes round.
- Sign in and go to Reports in the menu. The list is headed Report Templates.
- Press the + button above the list, on the right.
CropWatch calls it a “report template” because it is the recipe, not the finished report. The recipe runs on your schedule and produces a new report each time.
The first card is headed “1. Template”.
- Name — what the people receiving it will see. “Weekly operations summary” is the sort of thing.
- Description — optional notes for your team.
- Data pull interval — how closely the report looks at the data: every 30 minutes, or every hour. Leave it at 30 minutes unless you have a reason. It does not change how often the report is sent.
- Active template — leave it on. Off means the report is kept but never produced, which is how you pause one.
The second card is headed “2. Device Assignments”. Tick every sensor the report should cover. They are grouped by location, and the box filters as you type.
One report can cover several sensors, and they all appear in the same document. If you would rather each greenhouse had its own report, make one report per greenhouse instead.
The “Delivery schedule” card decides when a report is produced. There are three switches and a box:
- Daily — one report each day.
- Weekly — one report each week.
- End of month — one report at the end of each month.
- UTC offset (hours) — your time zone, as a number of hours. Japan is 9. Without it, the report is cut off at the wrong time of day and a “daily” report covers the wrong day.
These are switches, not a choice of one. Turning on both Daily and End of month gives you a report every day and another at the end of the month.
At least one of the three must be switched on. If none is, saving stops and says “Choose at least one cadence (daily, weekly, or monthly) for the active schedule.”
The “Recipients” card is the list of people who get the report. On a new report there is already one recipient: you, with the email address on your CropWatch account. Change it if somebody else should receive this one.
Press “Add recipient” for each further person, and fill in three things:
- Send by — Email.
- Email address — where it goes.
- Name — who it is, so the list makes sense later.
Add as many as you need. “Remove” takes one off the list, and appears only when there is more than one, so a report always has somebody to go to.
The “Alerts” card looks optional. It is not. A report with nothing in this card is saved happily and then never produces anything, because the alerts are what tell CropWatch which measurement to put in the report.
Press “Add alert” and fill in:
- Name — what this one means, such as “Too cold”.
- Condition — “Less than (<)”, “Greater than (>)”, “Range” and so on.
- Threshold — the number. A Range asks for a “Minimum” and a “Maximum” instead.
- Highlight color — the colour used to mark those readings in the report.
In the finished report, each alert does three things:
- Readings past the threshold are shaded in its colour, so problems stand out.
- A summary line says how many readings matched, and what share of the period that was.
- Those readings are always listed, even if the sampling would have skipped over them.
Alerts here are about temperature, and they never message anybody — they only colour the report. To be told at the time something happens, make an alert rule instead.
Below the recipients is a folded-up panel headed “(ADVANCED) Data Processing Schedules”. It throws away readings outside the hours you name — counting only working hours, say.
Its own warning is worth repeating:
“If you do not know what this is, please reach out to support before adding any settings here. Incorrect schedules can silently remove data from your reports.”
Leave it closed. With nothing in it, every reading in the period is used, which is what almost everybody wants.
Press “Create Report Template” at the bottom. A green message confirms it and you land back on the list.
If that button is grey and will not press, something is still missing. It stays grey until everything needed is filled in, and a yellow panel headed “Please check these fields” lists what. The usual ones are:
- “Enter a report name.”
- “Select at least one device for this report template.”
- “Choose at least one cadence (daily, weekly, or monthly) for the active schedule.”
- A recipient with a missing or misspelled email address.
Each row on the Reports page has three buttons on the right:
- The pencil opens it for changing. The last button then says “Save Changes”.
- The clock lists the reports this template has already produced, grouped by sensor, each with a “Download” button. If it says “No reports have been generated yet.”, the first one is still to come.
- The bin deletes the template. It asks first: “Are you sure you want to delete the report template …? This cannot be undone.”
To stop a report for a while, open it and switch “Active template” off rather than deleting it. Reports already sent are not affected by any of this.
Sometimes a reading needs an explanation: the door was open, the heater was being serviced. You can write that onto a report that has already been produced.
- On the Reports page, press the clock button on the row.
- Find the report and press “Edit”.
- You get the readings for that period. Use the note button on a row to add, change or remove a note, then press “Apply”.
- Press “Save Changes” when you have finished.
The report is rebuilt with your notes on the next scheduled run and kept beside the original. It is not emailed to the recipients again. Notes can be added for up to 23 months after the period ends, and only on air sensors.
- No alerts. The report saves, and then nothing ever arrives. See Alerts: the part that is easy to miss.
- The UTC offset left at zero. It starts at 0. In Japan it should be 9, or the report is cut off at nine in the morning rather than at midnight.
- Expecting it straight away. A report arrives when its schedule comes round, not when you save it.
- Confusing the two intervals. “Data pull interval” is how closely the data is looked at. The Delivery schedule is how often the report is sent.
- Opening the advanced panel. Readings can disappear from the report with no warning.
- A sensor that stopped reporting. The report still arrives; that sensor is simply missing from it.