Scheduled reports
A scheduled report renders on a recurring cadence and emails itself to a list of recipients — so quality evidence lands in the right inboxes without anyone remembering to generate it. This is the recurring counterpart to generating a report by hand on the Generate reports screen.
Before you start
Section titled “Before you start”- A Project Administrator role or higher. Creating, editing, enabling, and viewing scheduled reports and their delivery history is restricted to that role; a Reader, NDE Inspector, or Weld Associate is refused. See Manage users and roles.
- The report you want, identified by its report key from the
Report catalog (for example
weld-log), and the project it runs against. - Recipient email addresses — one or more people who should receive each run.
- A verified sending domain configured for your tenant (an administrator/operations setup, below).
Who can schedule reports
Section titled “Who can schedule reports”Scheduling is a QC-authority task. You must hold the Project Administrator role or higher, and you can only schedule reports for projects you are authorized on — the list you see and the schedules you can create are narrowed to your own projects. Recipients, by contrast, can be anyone with an email address; they don’t need a MaxTrax account to receive a delivery.
The verified sending domain (the address deliveries are sent from) is configured once for your tenant by an administrator or operations, not per schedule. If it isn’t set up, creating or enabling a schedule is refused with an “unverified sender” message — this is deliberate, so mail can never silently vanish.
Create a schedule
Section titled “Create a schedule”- Open Scheduled reports and choose New schedule.
- Enter the report type — the report key from the Report catalog
(for example
weld-log). - Enter the project id the report runs against.
- Set the cadence as a standard five-field cron expression and the timezone it’s evaluated in (see Cadence below).
- Enter the recipients — one or more email addresses, separated by commas or new lines.
- Save. The new schedule appears in the list with its next run time.
New schedules are enabled by default. You can Disable a schedule at any time to pause it (its next run clears and MaxTrax skips it) and Enable it again to resume.
Who a schedule runs as
Section titled “Who a schedule runs as”A schedule always runs as the person who created it, and MaxTrax re-checks that person’s access every time it is due — not just when the schedule was saved. The owner must still be a QC Manager or above and must still have access to the schedule’s project.
If they no longer do — they were removed from the project, their role was lowered, or their account was deactivated — MaxTrax switches the schedule off by itself rather than continuing to email the report. Nothing is rendered or sent on that run, and the reason is recorded in the audit trail. This is why a schedule can appear disabled when nobody disabled it.
If that happens, re-enabling the schedule on its own won’t help — it will switch itself off again the next time it is due. Fix the underlying access first (restore the owner’s project access or role, or reactivate their account), or have someone who does have access recreate the schedule so that they become its owner. Recreating is the usual answer when the original owner has left.
Occasionally MaxTrax may skip a run without disabling anything — for example if it briefly can’t confirm the owner’s access. Nothing is sent on a skipped run, the schedule stays enabled and still due, and MaxTrax retries on its next check rather than waiting for the next cadence. A one-off skip needs no action. If a schedule keeps skipping, its owner’s access can’t be confirmed at all — ask an administrator to check the audit trail.
Cadence: daily, weekly, or monthly
Section titled “Cadence: daily, weekly, or monthly”The cadence is a standard five-field cron expression — minute, hour, day-of-month, month,
day-of-week — evaluated in the IANA timezone you choose (for example America/Chicago). Common
cadences:
| Cadence | Cron | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| Daily | 0 7 * * * |
Every day at 07:00 |
| Weekly | 0 7 * * 1 |
Every Monday at 07:00 |
| Monthly | 0 7 1 * * |
The 1st of each month at 07:00 |
The expression and timezone must be valid, or the schedule is rejected when you save it. The list shows each schedule’s next run and last run so you can confirm the cadence is behaving as you expect.
Recipients
Section titled “Recipients”A schedule delivers to every address on its recipient list, and each address is tracked independently. Enter addresses separated by commas or new lines; each must be a valid email address, and a schedule has a maximum number of recipients. To change who receives a report, edit the schedule and update the list.
How deliveries are sent
Section titled “How deliveries are sent”When a run fires, MaxTrax renders the report once and emails it to each recipient. If the rendered file is small enough it rides as an email attachment; if it’s over the email size ceiling, MaxTrax sends a secure, time-limited download link instead of the attachment — never a silent oversized failure.
Track deliveries and retries
Section titled “Track deliveries and retries”Each schedule keeps a per-run, per-recipient delivery history. Open History on a schedule to see, for every recipient and run, a status:
| Status | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Sent | Delivered. The detail shows how it was delivered (attachment or link). |
| Pending | Queued or in progress; not yet delivered. |
| Failed | An attempt failed and it is being retried. The detail shows the last error. |
| Dead-lettered | Given up on — either a permanent problem, or automatic retries were exhausted. The reason is recorded. |
Retries are automatic. A transient problem (a temporary email-service or network hiccup) is retried several times with an increasing back-off delay. A permanent problem that retrying can never fix — an invalid recipient address, or an unverified sending domain — is dead-lettered immediately with its reason, rather than retried in vain. There is no manual “retry” button: the history is your record of what was delivered and what to fix. Because each scheduled run creates a fresh set of deliveries, correcting the underlying issue (for example fixing a recipient address or completing sender-domain verification) lets the next run deliver cleanly.
What happens next
Section titled “What happens next”- Once a schedule is enabled, its recipients receive the report automatically on every run — recurring QC evidence with no manual step.
- Check History periodically for Failed or Dead-lettered deliveries, especially after adding recipients or standing up a new tenant, and correct the cause.
- Disable a schedule when the report is no longer needed rather than leaving it running.
Related
Section titled “Related”- Report catalog — every report and its report key.
- Generate reports and printable labels — generate a report once, on demand.