Smoothwall Filter & Firewall: Creating Scheduled Reports.

This article applies to the Smoothwall Filter & Firewall On-Prem solution in either Hardware or VM form.

A Primer on Reports

The Smoothwall FIlter & Firewall includes a reporting engine capable of generating detailed reports on the wealth of information gathered by the Guardian Web Filter and the built-in Firewall module. These reports can all be run ad-hoc from the Reports menu or, as detailed in this article, set as a scheduled job to run either daily, once per weekday (Monday-Friday), once per week or once per month.

Setting up Scheduled Reports

To create a new scheduled report:

1. Log-in to your Smoothwall Filter & Firewall Admin UI.
2. Navigate to Reports > Reports > Scheduled.
3. In the configuration page:
   • In the Schedule segment configure the Start Date and Time you want the scheduled report to start running at, as well as the Repeat option to denote how often the report should run.
     • No repeat - The report is generated only at the time and date specified.
     • Daily repeat - The report is generated at the specified time, every day.
     • Weekday repeat - The report is generated at time specified, Monday to Friday.
     • Weekly repeat - The report is generated at the time specified, once a week.
     • Monthly repeat - The report is generated at the time specified, once a month.
   • Be sure to check the 'Enable' box.
   • In the Report segment select the report you wish to be run from the drop-down list and click 'Update' to load that report to the configuration. Configure any options the report itself may offer as per your requirements (Username, Client IP address, etc).
   • Select also a time frame the report runs over, working backwards from its scheduled run time as configured in the Schedule segment. 
   • In the Save Report segment enable the option to save the report locally to the Smoothwall and give it a meaningful name. Reports will be deposited to the Recent and Saved report menu. If you make use of the User Portal feature, you can allow the report to be viewed from there also. 
   • OPTIONAL: Enable the Email Report option to have the Smoothwall email the report to a recipient/group upon completion. This required the Smoothwall is configured with SMTP settings and email recipient groups under Reports > Settings > Output Settings and  Reports > Settings > Groups respectively. 
4. Once all segments are filled out, click the 'Add' button at the bottom of the page to create the scheduled job and add it to the list of scheduled reports at the bottom of the page.  If the report needs to be amended you can select and edit it from the table.

To edit a scheduled report:

1. Under the Scheduled reports section, select the Mark option for the relevant report.
2. Click Edit. The schedule details are displayed in the relevant sections.
3. Edit the configuration.
4. Click Add.

To delete a scheduled report, Under the Scheduled reports section, select the Mark option for the relevant report, click Remove.

Deleting scheduled reports removes the entire schedule. If you want to keep the report setup but not run the schedules, you can turn off the report schedule by editing the report setup and clearing the selection for Enabled.