How Do I Run a Report from a Mechanic Task?

For some of the more keen-eyed users of Mechanic, you may have noticed that we recently published a task last week using the Report Toaster special action.

This task is designed to help you take a report out of Report Toaster and export it via email or Slack to a specified recipient. 

Please Note - This guide is intended for users who already have at least a basic understanding of the Mechanic app. For users who are looking for a more general introduction to using Report Toaster and Mechanic, check out our intro guide here, or our blog post here.

Anyway, let's dive right in. 

Using the "Report Toaster - Deliver report PDF via email or Slack" task

Most of the task is fairly self explanatory, with the optional email/Slack fields for your intended recipient, and of course, the body of the message you want the recipient to see.

The key piece of information this needs to operate however is the Report ID, which is a unique identifier for each individual report in Report Toaster. 

So, let's look at how to get this key piece of information. 

Retrieving the Report ID from Report Toaster. 

1.) Navigate to the Report Toaster app, and go to a report you want to export using this Mechanic task. 

2.) On the top right, you'll see a file icon. Click on that, and scroll down to click on Mechanic. 

3.) You should see a popup with the fields shown below. The Report id can then be copied and pasted straight into the Report ID field of the Mechanic task.

Editing the Mechanic Action

Now in the event that you want to play around with the Mechanic Action or make further adjustments to the task, we make that process easy for you.

If you want to change the output format, under Format you can choose between CSV, PDF or JSON. Notice that the code in the Mechanic Action changes accordingly.

You can also make adjustments directly in the Mechanic Action field. Once you've got what you need, you'll want to copy that snippet of code and paste it into the relevant section in the Mechanic Task (under Advanced -> Code), as highlighted below.

And that's really all there is to it! Don't forget to save the task when you've finished making your changes, and you should largely be good to go :)

Anyway this is just a brief guide on how to run a report from a Mechanic task, but if you have any specific questions about setting up the tasks or creating specific reports, feel free to reach out to us and we'll give you a hand. 

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