Overview
Regular reporting is a great tool for every MSP to show the value they provide to their customers and to maintain good relations with them. This document covers everything you need to know on how to create automated client reports in BrightGauge.
Creating a client report consists of the following steps:
- Configure Client Mappings to determine how your customer's company name shows up across your connected data sources. This helps you create a single scheduled report that is filtered out and sent to multiple clients.
- Add your client recipients under client mappings. A report cannot be sent to a person not listed in your account. You may share with admins, analysts, viewers, and client recipients.
- Create and customize the report.
- Select the recipients.
- Schedule the report.
Configure Client Mappings
Before you can send reports to your clients, you must configure client mappings in BrightGauge. Client mappings determine how a company name appears across your data sources and help to create a single scheduled report that can be filtered and sent to multiple clients.
Important: As of March 2024, the ConnectWise Asio™ platform allows you to group multiple sites under one company in the Company Management > Company Details Page. When grouping multiple sites together, the sites are renamed in the format Company – Site Name.
In BrightGauge, you set up client mappings by searching the client site name. With the above change, searching for the site name may not result in all the sites. BrightGauge client mappings do not update dynamically, so when you begin using the Company Management feature, your BrightGauge client mappings may stop working as their names no longer match the new company-site names. Currently, you must manually update your Client Mappings by searching one site at a time.
To configure client mappings:
- Select DATA > Client Mappings.
- Click Add a Client.
- Enter a name for the mapping in the Client Name field.
- Search for a client by entering the client's name into the Search for a client field and clicking Search. If the client has a different name in different data sources, add each instance of the client here.
- If the search finds a match, the results from each data source are displayed. Click the integration logo card to see the listed company mappings found under that data source. If the name does not match correctly, remove it by clicking the X icon.
- If the auto-mapping search does not provide a result or shows an incorrect mapping, click the plus icon on the data source row. In the search bar, enter the name for this client exactly as it appears in the corresponding data source database. Select the appropriate client from the drop-down list.
- If a client has multiple names for the same data source (bundling child accounts into a parent account or multiple sites into one account), you can use this method to combine all of them.
- Check the names across all data sources. If you are mapping multiple accounts into the same client, you must search in each data source.
- Click Save.
Adding clients who aren't listed
Editing/Deleting
After a client mapping is created, you can edit or delete it by clicking the three dots (more options) menu on the right.Select Client Recipients
The next step is to assign recipients (contacts) for this client. This is only needed in order to have reports emailed directly to them. Use the three dots (more options) menu on the right and click on Client Recipients to launch the modal.
Start by typing the client’s name or email address. If you already have them as a recipient or contact in your account, then it will show those results. If you want to add a user that's not listed, use the form below the user listing window. You can add as many recipients as you would like.
Create a Client Report
Below are the specifics on how to create a report for clients.
To create a client report:
- Click on the green plus sign in the top menu bar and select Report. Alternatively, from the Reports screen, click Create Report
- Select For My Client.
- Select the client(s) you would like to send the report to. Search for a client by entering the client's name into the Enter a client name field.
- Click Next Step in the upper right corner.
- Select either Start From Scratch or Start From a Template.
- If you select Start From a Template, select a template from the list.
- If you select Start From a Template, select a template from the list.
- Click Next Step in the upper right corner.
- Click Use Portrait or Use Landscape to change the report page orientation.
- Click Use Cover Page to add a cover page to the report.
- Click Preview Report to view the report as it would appear to your client.
- Edit the report title and subtitle.
- Click a gauge in the column on the left to add it to the report. To reposition a gauge in the report, click the gauge header then drag and drop the gauge to the desired location. Use the search bar for faster sorting by gauge name or dataset name. You may rearrange and drag to resize these. You’ll notice that all gauges appear in reports, just as they do on dashboards, with the exception of number gauges to keep them in a readable format.
- Add text boxes, images, and page breaks to the report, as needed. For example, use text boxes to create section headers or to provide more information for a gauge in the report.
- You can choose to show gauges from one or multiple data sources. This is great for when you’re sending an executive summary and want to provide an overview of the overall health of a company.
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Apply filters to your gauges to include or exclude certain team member data, date ranges, and more. Visit Gauge Filters Explained for details on choosing the right filter.
- If you would like to save this report as a template for future use, click Save as Template.
Note: Visit 101 - Reports to learn about creating a report for team members (internal report).
Select Recipients
- Click into the To: field to select the email recipient(s).
Warning: If you selected more than one client when creating the report and add individual recipients, each recipient will receive a report for each selected client. We recommend selecting All Client Recipients if you have multiple clients selected to ensure that the reports are delivered to the correct recipients.
- Edit the email subject and email body, if needed. Items enclosed in double braces are automatically populated. Click Additional Template Tokens to add tokens as desired.
Use the following tokens to add custom data to your report email template:
- {{recpient_first_name}}: Recipient's first name
- {{recipient_name}}: Recipient's full name
- {{recipient_company_name}}: Recipient's company name
- {{report_link}}: Unique URL for each recipient's report (required)
- {{report_name}}: Report name
- {{report_owner_name}}: Report creator's name
- {{report_owner_email}}: Report creator's email
- {{your_company_name}}: Your company's name
- {{your_company_logo}}: Your company's logo
- Click Attach as PDF to include a PDF copy of the report with the email.
Note: PDF attachments have a size limit of 25MB. If the report is over 25MB, it fails to send.
Schedule the Report
You can schedule the report to be sent out to your recipients regularly.
- Click Schedule Report to create a daily, weekly, or monthly recurring report schedule. After you have set the desired schedule, click Update Report to apply the settings.
- Click Send Report.
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