How to set up Zendesk scheduled reports and email delivery

Keeping stakeholders informed about your support team's performance should not require manual work every day. Zendesk Explore lets you schedule automated dashboard deliveries via email, ensuring the right people get the right data at the right time without anyone having to remember to send it.

Whether you need daily snapshots for your morning standup, weekly summaries for leadership, or real-time alerts when metrics shift, scheduled reports keep everyone aligned. Let us walk through how to set this up properly.

What you'll need to get started

Before you can schedule dashboard deliveries, make sure you have the following in place:

• Zendesk Suite: Professional, Enterprise, or Enterprise Plus plan
• Zendesk Explore: Professional or Enterprise add-on enabled
• A shared dashboard: The dashboard you want to schedule must already be created and shared
• Edit permissions: You need permission to edit the dashboard you're scheduling
• For end-user deliveries: Enterprise or Enterprise Plus plan with the explore user tag configured

If you're unsure about your plan level, check with your Zendesk admin or review your subscription in the Admin Center.

Step-by-step: Scheduling your first dashboard delivery

Step 1: Open your dashboard and access scheduling

Start by navigating to your dashboard library in Zendesk Explore. Find the dashboard you want to schedule and open it. Once inside the dashboard, click the Share button in the top navigation, then select Schedule delivery from the dropdown menu.

If you do not see the Schedule delivery option, double-check that you have edit permissions for this dashboard and that your Explore add-on is active.

Step 2: Configure delivery frequency and timing

On the Schedule delivery page, you'll first set when and how often the dashboard should be sent. Use the frequency dropdown to choose from:

• Once Single delivery at a specific date and time
• Daily Repeats every day
• Weekly Repeats on selected days of the week
• Monthly Repeats monthly on a specific date

Here is something important to understand: the scheduled time is when Zendesk starts calculating your dashboard data, not when the email actually arrives. Explore needs time to sync and process the data, especially for complex reports. For dashboards showing the previous day's metrics, schedule them for 2 AM or later. This ensures the data sync (which can take up to two hours) completes before the dashboard generates.

You can also set how long the schedule should run, up to 12 months in the future. The schedule owner and all Explore admins will receive reminder emails one week and one day before the schedule expires.

Step 3: Select delivery formats

Zendesk gives you four format options for your scheduled deliveries. You can select one or multiple formats depending on how recipients will use the data:

Keep in mind the 25 MB attachment limit per email. If your dashboard is large, avoid selecting both Image and PDF formats together. If an export exceeds 25 MB, it is split across multiple emails marked sequentially (1/3, 2/3, 3/3). If any single export exceeds 25 MB, it will not be sent at all.

Step 4: Add recipients

Now choose who should receive these scheduled reports. Start typing in the People or groups field to search for:

• Individual agents or admins
• Groups of users
• End users (Enterprise plans only, with explore tag)

Recipients are automatically grouped by language and time zone, with one email sent to each group. For security, each recipient only sees their own email address in the To field. Other recipients remain hidden.

Note that you cannot schedule deliveries to users with Limited viewer or Limited editor permissions. If someone needs to receive reports but should not have full Explore access, consider adding them as a standard agent or using end-user delivery (if on Enterprise).

Step 5: Save and verify

Review all your settings one more time, then click Save. The schedule appears on the Scheduled deliveries page where you can monitor it, make changes, or delete it if needed.

To verify everything is working, you can trigger a test delivery or wait for the first scheduled run. If a scheduled delivery ever fails, the schedule owner receives a notification email with details about what went wrong.

Scheduling dashboard deliveries to end users

Enterprise and Enterprise Plus customers can schedule dashboard deliveries to end users (customers), not just internal team members. This is useful for sharing account-specific metrics, usage reports, or SLA performance with key accounts.

To enable this feature, an admin needs to:

1. Go to Explore settings and select the Sharing tab
2. Turn on Scheduled dashboard deliveries to end users
3. Add the explore tag to each end user profile who should receive reports
4. Wait a few minutes for the tag to sync with Explore

Once configured, end users appear in the recipient search just like agents do. The same format options and size limits apply.

Troubleshooting common email delivery issues

Even with proper setup, scheduled deliveries sometimes hit snags. Here's how to fix the most common problems:

Emails not received

If recipients aren't getting scheduled emails, start with the basics:

• Ask recipients to check spam or junk folders. Automated reports often get filtered.
• Verify the recipient's email address is correct in Zendesk.
• Confirm the dashboard is still shared and hasn't been deleted or restricted.
• Check that the schedule hasn't expired.

Attachment size errors

The 25 MB limit per email catches many teams off guard. If you're hitting this limit:

• Switch to CSV format only (smallest file size)
• Avoid combining Image and PDF formats
• Split large dashboards into multiple smaller dashboards
• Schedule separate deliveries for different tabs

Data sync delays

Sometimes the data in scheduled emails seems outdated. Remember that Explore's data sync can take up to two hours. If you schedule a dashboard for 9 AM, the data reflects what existed in Zendesk at 9 AM, but the email might not arrive until 10 or 11 AM depending on sync and processing time.

Permission issues

Scheduled deliveries fail silently when permissions change:

• You cannot schedule to light agents
• Limited viewer and Limited editor permissions are excluded
• If an agent is downgraded, all their scheduled deliveries are immediately deleted
• End users need the explore tag before they appear in recipient search

Legacy dashboard builder transition

As of early 2025, Zendesk is transitioning customers to a new dashboard builder. If you previously scheduled deliveries using the legacy builder, you need to recreate those schedules in the new builder. The old schedules won't carry over automatically.

Best practices for scheduled reports

Getting the most from scheduled deliveries requires some planning:

Morning standups: Schedule daily snapshots to arrive before your team starts work. Include key metrics like ticket volume, first response time, and backlog size so everyone starts the day informed.

End-of-day wrap-ups: Send summaries 30 minutes before shift end showing tickets solved, CSAT scores, and SLA performance. This helps teams see their impact and identify anything needing attention before clocking out.

Handover reports: For teams across time zones, schedule snapshots at shift change times. The incoming team gets a clear picture of queue status, escalations, and ongoing issues.

Stakeholder updates: Weekly or monthly executive summaries should focus on high-level trends rather than daily fluctuations. PDF format works best here for a polished presentation.

Keep recipient lists current: Review your scheduled deliveries quarterly. Remove recipients who've changed roles and add new stakeholders who need visibility.

Monitor expiration dates: With schedules running up to 12 months, it's easy to forget they're ending. The reminder emails help, but consider adding a calendar reminder to review and extend important schedules before they lapse.

An alternative approach: Automated performance snapshots with eesel AI

While Zendesk Explore's scheduled deliveries work well for static reports, some teams need more flexibility in how they share and act on support data. If you find yourself wanting scheduled reports that include AI-generated insights, natural language summaries, or delivery to channels beyond email, eesel AI's Zendesk integration offers an alternative approach.

With eesel AI connected to your Zendesk instance, you can:

• Get intelligent summaries of support trends delivered to Slack or email
• Ask questions about your data in natural language instead of building complex queries
• Receive proactive alerts when metrics shift unexpectedly
• Generate insights that connect ticket data with knowledge base gaps

The setup takes just a few minutes, and we learn from your existing tickets, macros, and help center content to provide contextually relevant reporting. For teams that want their reporting to do more than just show numbers, this can be a valuable complement to Zendesk's native scheduling.

Start automating your Zendesk reporting today

Scheduled dashboard deliveries in Zendesk Explore remove the manual work from keeping your team and stakeholders informed. By setting up the right schedules with appropriate formats and recipients, you ensure everyone has the data they need without anyone having to remember to send it.

Start with one or two critical dashboards. Pick a daily morning delivery for your support team and a weekly summary for leadership. Once you see the value, expand to cover more metrics and audiences.

If you want to go beyond static reports and explore how AI can help you understand and act on your support data, try our Zendesk integration. We connect directly to your existing Zendesk setup and start providing insights within minutes.