If there’s a task that flawlessly checks the “boring and repetitive” boxes that automation can improve, it’s reporting.

Everyone in a company is involved in some way or the other with regards to reports. Whether it’s producing reports or analyzing them, their importance is paramount in a business environment.

However, there is a gap between reporting and being good at reporting. At the very least, a good report has to:

• Contain accurate, consistent data

• Display information in a way that is easy to understand

• Be relevant

• Be presented in a timely manner

Needless to say, attaining this requires quite a bit of work. Automated reporting, on the other hand, will:

• Save you time

• Reduce the cost of producing reports

• Allow for free communication between information systems

In this article, we’re going to show you how to automate four types of reports using Make. 

Moreover, the following report automation solutions are available as Make templates, which you can modify and deploy in minutes. 

Without further adieu, let’s get cracking. 

1. Get Google Analytics reports on Slack

This automation will retrieve specific data from your Google Analytics account and send it to Slack in a simple and understandable format. 

It only employs two modules, and will retrieve the following metrics for the past 24 hours:

• Number of page views

• Number of users

• Average time spent on page

We have kept it simple for this demo, but feel free to tweak the available template to add more (or different) metrics and dimensions. 

After getting the data from Analytics, Make will post it as a Slack message. You can adjust the scenario to send this message to a channel, or as DM to you or someone else (or to a group of people as well). 

Below, you can see the scenario in action.

2. Send the number of tickets per status on JIRA as a report via Slack

At the end of the day, you’ll want to know how many tickets there are on Jira, and have them classified by the status of the project. 

Most managers regularly check JIRA to track this, but the following automation solves that and instead sends the full daily report to Slack. 

JIRA uses a special language called JQL to search within the platform. In this template, the JQL searches for a specific project and the following ticket statuses are:

• To Do

• In Progress

• In Review

• Done

For the automation to work correctly, you can use these statuses, or else change the JQL in the JIRA module to match the statuses you prefer. 

Also, you are not limited to searching for tickets from a specific project, and can also search tickets per user, or other criteria. 

For more information on JQLs, check out this documentation.

The template features three more modules on top of the JIRA one:

• Tools > Numeric aggregator

• Tools > Text aggregator

• Slack > Create a message

The built-in modules play an important role in getting the number of tickets that contain each of the statuses and display them in a readable format.

And finally, the report is sent via Slack.

When the scenario is triggered, it will look like this:

And that’s it - now you can get these reports on your Slack, and share them with the relevant stakeholders automatically every day.

3. Capture new Shopify orders on Excel and send the report through Slack

The following template makes manual spreadsheet updates obsolete. Plus, you will be able to share the data in a friendlier format, because who likes to receive Excel files on a regular basis? 

Not a Microsoft user? No worries! You can replace Excel with Google Sheets since they are very similar and will produce the same results.

This scenario uses this Excel spreadsheet template. In case you want to create one from scratch, it's important to mention that the spreadsheet must feature the following fields and formulae:

To automate Excel reporting of Shopify orders, the template relies on the following Make modules:

• Shopify > Watch orders

• Microsoft 365 Excel > Add a worksheet row

• Tools > Text aggregator

• Microsoft 365 Excel > Retrieve data

• Slack > Create a message

And this is how the integration looks like:

When the scenario executes, the orders with the following attributes will be retrieved:

• Status: closed

• Financial status: paid

• Fulfillment status: shipped

As with every other Make template, you can change the above criteria according to your preferences. Now, let’s take a look at the scenario execution:

With this template, the need for going through spreadsheets on a daily basis fades away, and you will still get all the relevant information in a neatly packaged message. 

4. Automatically share stock market reports on Slack with data for the current day

Traders and analysts are definitely used to scouring through data, but spending less time doing so while getting the same outcomes is how you get a little bit of breathing room. 

The template below goes in that direction by sending a full report with the performance of the stocks under your watch.  

All you need to do is add the names and tickers on a Google Sheet (as shown below) and Make will retrieve the data for you.

To achieve this, the template relies of the following modules:

• Google Sheets > Search rows

• HTTP > Make a request

• Tools > Text aggregator

• Slack > Create a message

And here is the data that will be retrieved for each stock:

• Open

• High for the day

• Low for the day

• Close

• Volume

The template retrieves data from www.marketstack.com by default, but if you want to use another source, you can go for it. As long as your source features an API endpoint to retrieve market data, you will be able to use it in the HTTP module of your scenario. 

Our only advice is to keep the ‘Symbol (B)’ element from the Google Sheet module at the end of the URL, as this is what makes it dynamic.

And here’s the template in action:

Conclusion

So there you have it! 

The essence of automated reporting is that you will reduce the time and resources spent on searching, collecting, and presenting information. 

Some will save themselves a few hours every month, while others will expand their capacity to produce accurate reports to a whole new dimension.

We are confident that Make will change the way you manage with reports, and hopefully, the way you think about reporting in general. 

Now, we’ll leave you to it. Happy automating!