Schedule a Pinboard job

With scheduled Pinboard email updates, you can analyze your data offline and share Pinboards with your colleagues, including people who may not have a ThoughtSpot account.

You can schedule a pinboard job for any Pinboard by using the Add a schedule prompt page.

You can add multiple schedules with different configurations for a single Pinboard. However, each job is limited to one Pinboard schedule. To add a schedule, you must either be an administrator, or have the Schedule pinboard privilege, and at least view-only access for the pinboard.

Pinboard schedule email format

The format of the scheduled Pinboard email is the following:

Sender

admin <no-reply@notification.thoughtspot.com>

Subject

<Pinboard name> update

Body

Hi <user>,

Attached is your scheduled update with the latest data from the <Pinboard name> pinboard.

[If you set a description] Description: <Your description text>

View Pinboard button

Attachment(s)

CSVs (one for each table in the Pinboard) or 1 PDF

Pinboard schedule email

Scheduling a Pinboard

To schedule a Pinboard, follow these steps:

  1. Sign in to ThoughtSpot from a browser.

  2. Click Pinboards, on the top navigation bar.

  3. Select the pinboard you want to create a schedule for.

  4. Click the More menu icon more options menu icon and select Manage schedules to view all of the schedules set for the pinboard.

  5. Click + Schedule to add a new schedule.

    On the Add a Schedule page, you create a new schedule for your pinboard.

    scheduled pinboards 1
  6. Set the values for your schedule:

    Repeats

    You can rebuild a Pinboard every n minutes, hourly, daily, weekly, or monthly. For some of these, you can also choose specific times of the day or days of the week.

    If you schedule a Pinboard hourly or every n minutes, ThoughtSpot bases the schedule on when you first schedule the Pinboard. For example, if you schedule a Pinboard to repeat every 3 hours, and you first click on Schedule at 8:14 A.M., ThoughtSpot sends it to you at 11:14 A.M., 2:14 P.M., and so on.

    Make sure to note the Server time zone.

    Name

    Provide a short name for this schedule. This name should be descriptive and unique. This section does not appear in the Pinboard schedule email.

    Description

    Enter a description to remind yourself and to inform others. If this is an important schedule for a meeting or a report, you should mention that. This section appears as Description: <your content> in the Pinboard schedule email.

    Type
    • CSV files provide all data for tables, with one attachment for each table. If your Pinboard has 3 tables and 4 charts, the Pinboard schedule email contains 3 CSVs, one for each table, and no content on the charts in the Pinboard. Use CSV files to perform further analysis offline.

    • PDF files show all visualizations in the Pinboard. Each chart uses a page in the file; tables show only the first 100 rows of a table. Use PDF files to skim the data. The Pinboard schedule email contains 1 PDF with the entire Pinboard.

    • Configure layout options allows you to specify the Pinboard layout, after you choose either CSV or PDF. For more details about the layout options, refer to Download a pinboard as a PDF.

      Refer to format of scheduled Pinboards for more information about the differences between CSV and PDF attachments in a scheduled Pinboard email.

    Gating condition

    Write a statement that returns a single boolean value (true or false). For example, sum (revenue) > 100 is a valid condition, but is_weekend (commit_date) is not, since it returns a result per row of data. You can use any data source (table, worksheet, or view) for the gating condition, since ThoughtSpot executes the query as an admin with access to all data sources. The gating condition formula and any tables you use in it do not need to be related to the pinboard the gating condition is for. You can use any valid formula in your statement. ThoughtSpot checks the formula syntax, but does not validate if the formula returns a valid single boolean.

    At the scheduled time, ThoughtSpot executes the gating condition query as a ThoughtSpot admin user. If the condition evaluates to true, ThoughtSpot processes the Pinboard.

    For a list of valid formulas, see Formula function reference.

    For an in-depth example of a scenario where a gating condition is useful and powerful, refer to Pinboard schedule gating conditions in practice.

    ThoughtSpot executes the gating condition as a ThoughtSpot admin user. If you are using passthrough security for your external data warehouse connection, the gating condition may not work.
    Recipients

    You are limited to 1000 recipients for each job. You can add Users or groups. Use Emails to add recipients who are not ThoughtSpot users. Your ThoughtSpot admin must set these email domains as allowed domains in advance. Contact ThoughtSpot Support to add allowed domains.

    If you experience problems with sending email, your cluster may not have SMTP enabled. Contact your system administrator to resolve this issue.

  7. Click Schedule to save your schedule configuration.

When you download tables with date columns or view these tables in scheduled pinboards, the format for those dates may differ from their appearance in ThoughtSpot. The following date bucketing types may look different:

Bucketing Type Appearance in ThoughtSpot Appearance in CSV, XLSX, or PDF

Hourly

AM/ PM

24 hour

Day of week

Name of day (for example, Saturday)

Number of day (for example, 6)[1]

Monthly

January 2021

1/1/2021

Month of year

Name of month

Number of month[2]

Quarterly

Q1 2021

1/1/2021

Quarter of year

Name of quarter (for example, Q4)

Number of quarter (for example, 4)

Yearly

2021

1/1/2021


1. Numbers may differ if you use custom calendar.
2. Numbers may differ if you use custom calendar, or change the fiscal start month in another way.