Looking for an efficient way to automate Grafana reports and enhance business insights? Automating your Grafana reporting can save time, improve productivity, and ensure stakeholders receive accurate data when they need it. While Grafana provides powerful dashboards for visualizing data, its reporting features in the open-source version are limited. To unlock more advanced reporting capabilities, options like Grafana Enterprise Reporting and Skedler are available.

Skedler, in particular, stands out as the best alternative to Grafana reporting, offering enhanced flexibility, customization, and cost-effectiveness. In this guide, we’ll explore how to automate your Grafana reports using these tools, comparing their features to help you make an informed choice.

All About Grafana Reports: Unveiling the Possibilities

Can Grafana Generate Reports?

Yes, but report generation is not available in the open-source version of Grafana. You need either Grafana Cloud Pro, Grafana Cloud Advanced, or Grafana Enterprise to generate and automate reports.

How Often Can You Schedule Reports in Grafana?

Reports can be scheduled to generate at hourly, daily, weekly, or monthly intervals, depending on your business requirements. The scheduling feature allows you to share reports in PDF format via email with stakeholders. Grafana also offers company-wide report configuration settings to customize the distribution of these reports.

How do I get a Grafana Report?

3 major components of Grafana will help you implement and understand metrics: panels, dashboards, and reports.

The panel is the first and most important component in Grafana that represents data visualization. With a panel, you can create a graph/plot that visualizes the given metric or several metrics.

The dashboard is just a collection of different panels. Having a collection of different panels on a single dashboard will help you analyze related metrics together and understand how the business is doing.

You can then generate reports of these dashboards and share them with your stakeholders in a pdf format. This facility is available only in Grafana Cloud Pro and Advanced and in Grafana Enterprise.

You can configure template variables for the dashboard on the report page for each report. But this is only available in Grafana Enterprise version 7.5+. You can also include dynamic dashboards with panels or rows, set to repeat by a variable, into reports which are only available from Grafana Enterprise version 8.0+.

You can also attach a CSV file along with the PDF report email for the selected dashboard but this feature is available on Grafana Enterprise version 8.0+ provided you have installed an image rendering plugin.

Prerequisites

Before sending reports using Grafana, ensure you have configured your SMTP. Additionally, install the image rendering plugin. By default, reports utilize the time range of the dashboard, but you can modify the time range by saving adjustments to the dashboard or setting a custom time range via the Time Range field in the report form.

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Can Grafana send Email Reports?

In Grafana Enterprise version 7.2 and beyond, you can send customized email reports to stakeholders. These reports can feature your company logo in the PDF, allowing for a branded email header and footer with custom URL links.

Limitations of Grafana Reporting

While Grafana Enterprise offers some great benefits, it has a few limitations:

• Restricted Report Layouts: Grafana confines users to four basic report layouts: Simple Portrait, Simple Landscape, Grid Portrait, and Grid Landscape. This limited selection may restrict the visual representation of your data.

• Notification Limitations: Notification options are confined to the email SMTP channel, limiting the avenues for alerting stakeholders or team members.

• Basic Report Customization: Customizing reports in Grafana is a somewhat basic affair. The available customization options may not meet the diverse needs of users seeking more intricate and tailored reports.

• Grafana Variable Support: While Grafana variables are supported in the Enterprise version 7.5 and above, their functionality is somewhat restricted. Users can override dashboard variables with custom values, but this feature may not cater to advanced use cases.

• Absence of Burst Reporting: Grafana lacks support for burst reports, meaning you cannot generate multiple personalized reports for different recipients from a single dashboard. This limitation hinders the flexibility required for varied reporting needs.

• Basic Scheduling Capability: Scheduling reports in Grafana is a relatively straightforward process. However, the tool lacks advanced scheduling options, such as scheduling reports exclusively on workdays or generating yearly reports.

• Error Handling Challenges: Grafana’s reporting functionality lacks robust error handling. In the event that a report fails to generate, there is no notification or error message provided to help users identify and address the root cause promptly.

• High Licensing Cost: Last but not least, the cost of a Grafana Enterprise Stack license is quite significant.

Automate Grafana Reports with Skedler

Skedler streamlines the process of generating professional reports and distributing them to stakeholders. Download Skedler, follow the step-by-step installation guide, and configure it effortlessly in VMs or containers. In configuring and generating reports with Skedler, start by selecting a Grafana dashboard; Skedler will automatically discover all existing dashboards for you.

Now, we will take you through configuring and generating reports with Skedler. The Grafana dashboard forms the basis of the scheduled report. Skedler will automatically discover all the existing Grafana dashboards for you. You just need to select one dashboard for your report.

• Fill in your Grafana URL and authentication data to connect Skedler to your Grafana.

• Create a report by clicking the top right button in the main dashboard and selecting Visual Report to create PDF reports

• Drag and drop a chart, the size that the chart/graph pops up in what we call “True Size”, the size of the chart in the Grafana dashboard. You can easily move and resize them as well. 

• Schedule your report

You can schedule your reports to get generated daily, weekly monthly, or even for a custom time frame as per your requirement. You can also choose from a variety of report formats from PDF, CSV, PNG, or HTML

• The next step is to distribute your reports to your stakeholders. Choose if you want to create an email notification channel or a Slack notification channel.

Fill in the respective information for the email or Slack channels, and click save in the bottom right corner. You can customize who receives the report, subject, and message that accompanies the report.

The Advantages of Skedler Reports

• Effortless Installation and Configuration: Skedler boasts a swift installation process and user-friendly configuration, ensuring a seamless setup.

• Compatibility Across Grafana Versions: Regardless of your Grafana version, Skedler seamlessly integrates to enhance your reporting capabilities.

• Comprehensive Format Support: Skedler goes beyond boundaries, supporting various formats including PDF, Excel/CSV/HTML, and PNG reports for versatile reporting options.

• Customizable Layouts with Rich Templates: Elevate the value of your data by customizing layouts with Skedler’s rich templates, tailored to suit your unique reporting needs.

• Branding Integration: Infuse your brand identity into every report with Skedler’s branding feature, ensuring a professional and cohesive representation.

• Personalized Reports from a Single Dashboard: Craft personalized reports for different recipients efficiently, all from a single, user-friendly dashboard.

• Flexible Scheduling and Distribution: Experience unparalleled flexibility in scheduling and distribution, allowing you to tailor reporting processes to your specific organizational requirements.

• Versatile Deployment Options: Skedler supports multiple deployment options, including Docker, offering flexibility in adapting to diverse IT environments.

• Compatibility with Grafana On-Prem and Grafana Cloud: Whether On-Prem or on the Cloud, Skedler seamlessly collaborates with Grafana to cater to your preferred deployment environment.

• Role-Based Access Control (RBAC): Skedler ensures data security with Role-Based Access Control, allowing you to monitor and control user access effectively.

• Robust Error Handling and Notification Mechanisms: Skedler prioritizes reliability, featuring robust error handling and notification mechanisms to keep you informed and in control.

Both Grafana Enterprise and Skedler offer solutions for automating Grafana reports, but Skedler stands out for its affordability, flexibility, and robust feature set. From dynamic dashboards to seamless scheduling and personalized reporting, Skedler is the go-to tool for enhancing your reporting capabilities.

If you’re ready to automate your Grafana reporting process, Skedler offers a user-friendly, cost-effective solution to meet your needs. Explore Skedler to take your Grafana reports to the next level.

By restructuring your reporting process, you can save time, increase productivity, and ensure that your stakeholders are always informed with the latest insights. Try Skedler today! 

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