The PDF and the shareable link

The same monthly report exists in three forms: the summary in the e-mail, a page in the browser that anyone with the link can open, and a PDF. They are built from one set of figures — there is no second calculation that could disagree with the first.

The e-mail

The e-mail is the short version. It is meant to be read on a phone in half a minute: the month's totals, one line per site, the incidents, and a link to everything else. Because an e-mail has to stay readable, long lists are trimmed — up to 25 site lines, 10 incidents and 12 notable changes, with a “+N more” line after that. The totals always cover every site, trimmed lines or not.

The shareable page

At the bottom of the e-mail is a link that opens the full report in the browser. It is the part of the feature that matters if you look after sites for other people:

• No sign-in. The person you send it to does not need a WP Safer account. The link itself carries the permission.
• Nothing is trimmed. Unlike the e-mail, the page lists every site, every incident and every notable change.
• It is your report, not our advert. The page has no WP Safer menu, no cookie banner and no sign-up prompt. On Agency it carries your logo, name and colour and can drop the “powered by” line entirely.
• It is kept out of search engines and out of caches, and it is not linked from anywhere. The only way to it is the address you were given.

You can open the current one yourself at any time: Monitoring → Report template → Open last report.

How long a link lasts

A report link is valid for one year from the moment it was created. After that the address returns a short page saying the link has expired, and you can get a new one from the panel. An address that was mistyped or altered is simply not recognised.

Treat the link like a document you e-mailed: anyone who has it can open the report, so share it the way you would share the PDF. If the account's plan later stops including the report, existing links stop working too — the permission is checked every time the page is opened, not once when the link was made.

It is a live view, not an archive

The report is rebuilt from your records each time it is opened, which has two consequences worth knowing. Sites appear under their current names, not the names they had at the time; and a month older than the retention period for a given kind of record will show fewer lines than it did originally — update history, for example, is kept for 180 days. The page says so at the bottom rather than showing a shorter list without explanation.

The PDF

The report page has a Download PDF button. The PDF is generated on our server from a layout made for paper: A4, tables instead of the screen's cards, your branding on the cover, and page numbers. It is a file you can attach to your own invoice or e-mail. (The browser's own Print is still there as well, and prints the page you are looking at.)

The file is named after the brand and the month, so a folder of them stays sorted.

If you would rather not fetch it every month, Monitoring → Report template has a switch that attaches the PDF to the monthly e-mail. The link stays in the e-mail either way; if for some reason the file cannot be produced, the e-mail is still sent, just without the attachment.

Next: choosing what goes into the report, branding it, and turning it off.