Scheduling custom looker PDF reports to hundreds of users at once

[ramiz1111]

Hi,

By using the schedule option in the dashboard, can I schedule 100s of reports customized to each user based on their user attributes and send it as a PDF to their email?

[GavinW]

You can do this, but bear in mind that each query on each dashboard will have to run individually for each recipient, and then each dashboard will have to be rendered by Looker to generate the PDF to send to them. So if you are thinking of doing something like this, be very conscious of the load that you are going to put on your instance, and consider doing some load testing before you try to implement it. 

[ramiz1111]

Hi,

Thanks for the response @GavinW @!! Is there any alternative to do this without putting a load on Looker. The reason is we are planning to set the scheduling to send 100's of reports at once.

[GavinW]

The easiest way to manage it is to simply schedule the reports to run at times you know the instance will not be busy. 

Some large users of Looker also use a dedicated virtual machine to run scheduled reports, so that they do not affect human users of an instance - there may be a dollar cost, but it might be worth raising with your Looker account team.