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Email and Schedule Weekly DCT Reports

By Nicholas Mathison posted 03-17-2025 02:11:19 PM

  

Schedule Weekly DCT Reports 

  

Data Control Tower has a wide variety of reports such as VDB summaries, data at risk, and storage capacity. Usually, customers like to see and view these reports in the DCT UI. However, it’s often beneficial to schedule a CSV version of the weekly report for audit or a simple reminder. Particularly, our original Mission Control customers might find this feature particularly valuable! 

Automated and scheduled sending of any DCT report can be configured via the DCT API using the Swagger UI. See below to understand how you can schedule the report and refine it further. 

Before we begin, if you need more information about our API and how to use the Swagger UI, please read our documentation. (Remember to specify `apk` when entering your API Key!) 

 

Step #1: Configure SMTP 

 

The SMTP server is what allows the email to be sent from DCT to your email address. This is done via the “management/smtp Update SMTP Config" API.  

 

A sample curl command might look like the following: 

curl -X 'PUT' \ 

-H 'Authorization: apk <YOUR_API_KEY>' \ 

-H 'accept: application/json' \ 

-H 'Content-Type: application/json' \ 

-d ' 

"server": "smtp.gmail.com", 

"port": 587,  

authentication_enabled": true, 

"tls_enabled": true, 

"username": "<TEST_USERNAME>", 

"password": "<TEST_PASSWORD>" 

"from_address": "test@email.com 

} ' 

If testing, there are various free test SMTP servers out there (such as smtp.gmail.com). But for production usage, work with your IT team to identify the correct SMTP server. 

Lastly, the “/management/smtp/validate” API is often helpful to confirm the SMTP is working before you start scheduling any reports.

  

Step #2: Schedule the Report 

 

The task is choosing the report and scheduling it. This is done via the "/reporting/schedule Create a new report schedule" API. 

 

 

A sample curl command might look like the following: 

-H 'accept: application/json' \ 

-H 'Authorization: apk ' \ 

-H 'Content-Type: application/json' \ 

-d ' 

"report_type": "VIRTUALIZATION_STORAGE_SUMMARY",  

"cron_expression": "0/20 * * * * ?",  

"time_zone": "UTC",  

"message": "Delphix storage summary",  

"file_format": "CSV",  

"enabled": true,  

"recipients": [ "test@email.com", “test2@email.com ]  

} ' 

  

The available options for `report_type` include: 

DCT Report Name 

`report_type` value 

Data Governance 

Data at Risk 

DATA_RISK_SUMMARY 

Data 

VDB Inventory 

VDB_INVENTORY_DATA 

dSource Inventory 

DSOURCE_USAGE_DATA 

Engine Performance 

ENGINE_PERFORMANCE_ANALYTIC  

Compliance 

Job Executions 

MASKING_EXECUTION_METRICS 

Engine Performance 

ENGINE_PERFORMANCE_ANALYTIC 

Engine State 

None 

Storage 

Block Storage 

VIRTUALIZATION_STORAGE_SUMMARY 

Storage Savings 

STORAGE_SAVINGS_SUMMARY 

System 

Source Ingestion 

DSOURCE_CONSUMPTION_DATA  

Account Activity 

AUDIT_LOGS_SUMMARY 

  

Make sure you configure the `cron_expression`and `time_zone` values to get the cadence as desired As an example, sending the report at 9am on Monday, the expression would be: “0 9 * * Mon”. If you are unfamiliar with cron job formatting, then I recommend the crontab.guru website. 

If you ever need to modify the configuration of this weekly report, simply run the same API command again but with the values modified. Setting the `enabled` value to false will also disable the scheduler. 

  

Advanced: Filter and Refine the Report 

In addition to using the out-of-box reports, you can also further customize the reports to meet your needs or users. For many of the above reports, there are separate commands that allow you to further customize and refine the delivered CSV. 

  

  • Filter Expression: This special regex-like formatting focuses on specific objects or tags. If unfamiliar, the “Advanced Search” in many of the Data tab’s UI might provide some initial guidance 

  • Sort: This allows you to sort in ascending or descending order when the CSV is sent. 

  • Limit: If you are noticing slowness around the scheduled runtime time then consider shrinking the limit or further consolidating the filter expression to focus on a few values. 

  

 

Schedule Multiple Reports

If you need additional reports scheduled, then simply re-run the POST `reporting/schedule` API called above, but specify a different report, cadence, or email recipient.  

Lastly, if you need to clean up, simply use the GET `reporting/schedule` API call to see the configured schedules and run the DELETE `reporting/schedule/{scheduleId}` to remove it. 

 

Outro 

Thanks to DCT’s API-first model, there’s often more than meets the U-eye. Its API is quite extensive and the Swagger UI and DCT Toolkit make it easy to investigate the large set of functionality 

The set of insights and reporting available within DCT is only going to grow as we look to the future. Keep an eye on our release notes to see what new reports will be available to review and schedule! 

 

 

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Comments

03-18-2025 03:51:37 AM

Great post, thanks :-)

Suggestion. When releasing a new version of DCT with new stuff in the API, tell us about it in release notes.

I don't have time to make a compare between old and new swagger sites :-)