Reporting & Analytics

Overview

The report builder is a standard feature available in Acorn PLMS that allows you to create custom reports by selecting specific data fields, applying filters, and defining your data parameters. This user-configurable approach means you maintain complete control over the information you capture and analyse, enabling data-driven decision-making across your organisation.

Key Capabilities

Custom Field Selection

You can include custom fields in your reports, allowing you to capture organisation-specific data alongside standard learning metrics. This capability ensures that your reports reflect the unique information requirements of your business, whether tracking departmental affiliation, cost centre allocation, or custom compliance markers.

Flexible Filtering Options

The report builder supports multiple filtering mechanisms, enabling you to narrow data sets to specific user groups, time periods, training programmes, or completion statuses. Filters help you isolate the information most relevant to your query, reducing noise and focusing analysis on actionable insights.

Data Selection and Customisation

You have granular control over which data elements appear in your reports. Rather than receiving comprehensive datasets with excess information, you select only the fields and metrics relevant to your analysis. This streamlined approach improves report readability and ensures stakeholders receive focused, meaningful data.

User Training History Reports

One primary application of the report builder is generating User Training History Reports. These reports provide a comprehensive view of each user's engagement with the Acorn PLMS platform, charting their individual learning journey over time.

Understanding User Engagement

By examining individual training histories, administrators and learning managers can better understand the learning patterns and dedication of each user. These insights reveal:

• Training completion timelines and patterns
• Frequency and consistency of platform engagement
• Performance trajectories over specific periods
• Gaps in required training completion
• User progression through learning pathways

Report Contents

The User Training History Report captures selected information across all users in your system or a filtered subset. You can configure the report to display:

• User identification and profile information
• Training courses accessed and completed
• Completion dates and time-to-completion metrics
• Assessment scores and performance data
• Engagement metrics such as login frequency or content interaction
• Custom fields relevant to your organisation's tracking requirements

Building Your First Report

The ad-hoc reporting functionality means you are not limited to predefined report templates. Instead, you can create reports on demand by:

1. Defining Your Objective – Identify what question your report should answer. Are you tracking compliance training completion? Analysing engagement by department? Monitoring individual user progress?

2. Selecting Data Fields – Choose which fields to include, combining standard fields (user name, completion date, score) with custom fields unique to your organisation.

3. Applying Filters – Narrow your dataset by user group, date range, training programme, completion status, or other relevant criteria.

4. Configuring Output – Specify how you want data sorted, grouped, or arranged to best present your findings.

5. Generating and Exporting – Create the report and export results for further analysis, sharing with stakeholders, or archival purposes.

Practical Applications

The custom report builder supports diverse organisational needs:

• Compliance Verification – Generate reports showing training completion for regulated programmes, filtered by department or certification requirement.
• Performance Analysis – Track assessment scores and learning outcomes across user segments to identify coaching or support needs.
• Engagement Monitoring – Create ad-hoc reports examining user activity patterns to identify at-risk learners requiring intervention.
• Departmental Reporting – Build custom reports segmented by cost centre, location, or team to support decentralised learning oversight.
• Executive Summaries – Combine custom fields and aggregate metrics to create high-level reports for leadership review.

Standard Feature Availability

Custom field reporting and ad-hoc report building are standard features in Acorn PLMS, meaning they are available to all users without additional licensing. This democratisation of reporting ensures that administrators and managers throughout your organisation can generate insights independently, reducing reliance on centralised reporting teams.

Best Practices

When building custom reports:

• Start with clear objectives – Define what decision or question your report addresses.
• Limit data scope – Use filters to keep reports focused and performant, particularly when dealing with large user bases.
• Document custom fields – Ensure stakeholders understand what custom fields represent and how they are populated.
• Schedule regular runs – Create reports on predictable schedules (weekly, monthly) to track trends over time.
• Archive historical reports – Maintain copies of reports for audit trails and longitudinal analysis.

Conclusion

The Custom & Ad-Hoc Report Builder in Acorn PLMS transforms reporting from a static, predefined function into a dynamic, user-driven capability. By combining custom fields, flexible filters, and data selection tools, you can generate reports that directly address your organisation's learning and performance priorities, enabling data-informed decisions across all levels of your learning programme.

Dashboards & Data Visualization Overview

Acorn PLMS delivers powerful dashboard and data visualization capabilities designed to meet the reporting needs of administrators, managers, and executives. Through a flexible widget-based approach, you can create customized dashboards that display the metrics most relevant to your organization, enabling quick access to critical performance and learning data.

Dashboard Types

Administrator Dashboards

Administrators receive a standard home dashboard equipped with graphs and histograms to monitor system-wide activity. Reporting widgets can be utilized to create a custom reporting dashboard for administrators to showcase fast and easy access to data about users and content. You can leverage Supervisor, Reporting Officer, and General dashboard widgets to build views tailored to administrative oversight.

Manager Dashboards

Managers benefit from custom dashboards that can be built to cater to their specific user experience needs. Custom Reporting Widgets can be added to track progress across Performance and Learning items, enabling you to monitor the status of responses per reviewers. This capability is particularly useful when you need visibility into pending momentums and PDP (Personal Development Plan) progress across your team.

Learner Dashboards

Your end-users receive personalized dashboards that provide a customized experience upon login. These learner dashboards are standard across Acorn PLMS and help create an engaging entry point for users accessing the system.

Customization & Widget Architecture

Building Custom Dashboards

Acorn uses a widget approach to allow you to create customized reporting dashboards. Each tenancy has its own dashboard configuration, and multiple dashboards can be active at one time. This flexibility means you can design different dashboard experiences for different audiences within your organization.

Widgets can be restricted to particular user groups via Cohorts, ensuring that specific teams or departments see only the metrics relevant to their roles. HomePage Widgets are a great way to display information in an engaging way, transforming raw data into visual formats that encourage user engagement and understanding.

Configurable Metrics & Reporting

You have the ability to choose and build your own metrics and dashboards showing activities. Custom reporting dashboards can be tailored to your organization, with the option to configure key metrics such as learner progress, course completions, and leaderboards. This provides a clear overview of performance across different levels of your organizational structure.

Admins and managers with appropriate permissions can create dashboard reports for their organization hierarchy and for multiple certifications or courses. Dashboards can be filtered based on multiple criteria, including specific user groups or course progress, ensuring that you have the tools needed to monitor and manage learning outcomes effectively.

Data Visualization Features

Charts & Graphs

The administrator home dashboard supports graphs and histograms as standard features. These visual representations help you quickly identify trends, performance patterns, and areas requiring attention without requiring deep analysis of raw data.

Interactive Dashboard Displays

Acorn dashboards provide interactive visualization capabilities that go beyond static reports. Feedback can be viewed in various forms, and leaders and learners can see back and forth interactions on capability proficiency discussions through the Capabilities self and supervisor view. This interactive approach enables you to track not just quantitative metrics, but also qualitative feedback and discussion threads.

Widget-Based Configuration

The configurable dashboard view uses widgets as building blocks, allowing you to add, remove, and arrange components based on your needs. This modular approach ensures that your dashboards remain relevant as your organizational priorities shift.

Organizational Insights

Progress Tracking

Custom Reporting Widgets can be configured to display pending momentums, providing visibility into PDP progress for managers and administrators. You can monitor the status of responses and reviews across your team, ensuring accountability and timely action on development initiatives.

Content Recommendations

Acorn offers a "Recommended Content" tab within the user dashboard that suggests content based on user activity and course enrollments or completions. This personalized approach helps you align learning recommendations with individual needs and organizational capabilities development.

Survey Visibility

Your organization can post surveys on the domain home dashboard visible to all users. This centralized approach to survey distribution ensures consistent engagement and data collection across your entire user base.

Multi-Tenancy & Language Support

Each tenancy has its own independent dashboard configuration, allowing different business units or divisions to maintain separate reporting structures. The Dashboard and GUI are available in multiple languages, supporting global organizations with diverse user populations.

Extended Access for Pre-Boarding

Acorn offers external features such as an external dashboard and catalog, allowing pre-boarding users to view and enroll in content prior to creating a login. This seamless access to necessary materials during the pre-boarding process extends your dashboard capabilities beyond internal employees to prospective team members.

Getting Started

To begin building your custom dashboards:

1. Identify the key metrics and KPIs relevant to your role and organizational goals
2. Determine which user groups need access to specific dashboards
3. Utilize available widgets to construct your dashboard layout
4. Configure filters and data sources to display relevant information
5. Test the dashboard across different user cohorts to ensure appropriate visibility and functionality
6. Refine and adjust as needed based on user feedback and evolving requirements

By leveraging Acorn's dashboard and data visualization capabilities, you can transform raw performance and learning data into actionable insights that drive informed decision-making across your organization.

Power BI & External Analytics Integration Power BI & External Analytics Integration

Acorn PLMS is designed to integrate seamlessly with your organisation's external analytics ecosystem. Whether you use Power BI, Tableau, Snowflake, Fivetran, or other leading analytics platforms, Acorn provides robust integration pathways that enable you to connect your learning performance data with advanced analytical tools for deeper insights and reporting.

Supported Analytics Platforms

Acorn PLMS maintains native integration support for several key analytics and HR systems:

Power BI Integration

Power BI integration is fully supported within Acorn PLMS, allowing you to connect your learning and performance data directly to Microsoft's powerful business intelligence platform. This enables real-time dashboards, advanced visualisations, and automated reporting that can be distributed across your organisation.

HRIS & HR System Connections

Beyond analytics tools, Acorn integrates with Human Resources Information Systems (HRIS) platforms such as ADP and UKG. These integrations facilitate automated user provisioning and data synchronisation between your HR systems and Acorn, ensuring your learning records stay aligned with your employee database.

Additional Supported Integrations

Acorn also supports API connections with Ripple LMS and maintains an in-platform Integrations Hub featuring several native integrations. This allows you to build a connected technology ecosystem tailored to your organisation's needs.

Integration Methods

REST API Architecture

Acorn PLMS uses industry-standard REST API architecture to facilitate external connections. This robust technical foundation enables reliable, secure data exchange with third-party analytics and reporting tools. Your IT team can leverage comprehensive Open API documentation to build and maintain custom integrations.

Accessing Open API Documentation

Detailed API documentation is available to help your developers understand available endpoints, authentication methods, and data structures. This documentation enables custom integration development when native connectors are not available, giving your organisation flexibility to connect with virtually any external analytics platform.

Customisable Data Exports

CSV Export Capability

Acorn allows you to export reports and datasets as CSV files, providing a straightforward method to transfer your learning data into external analytics tools. CSV exports are compatible with virtually all analytics platforms and spreadsheet applications, offering a universal data exchange format.

Seamless External Analytics Integration

The combination of CSV export functionality and API access enables seamless integration with external analytics and reporting tools. You can automate regular data pulls from Acorn into your analytics platform, ensuring your dashboards and reports reflect the latest learning performance metrics.

Data Mapping and Configuration

Configurable Data Mapping

When establishing integrations, particularly with HRIS systems like ADP and UKG, Acorn provides configurable data mapping capabilities. This allows your team to define how data fields from Acorn correspond to fields in external systems, ensuring data flows correctly and maintains consistency across your technology stack.

Automated Data Synchronisation

Once configured, integrations enable automated data synchronisation. User provisioning, learning records, and performance metrics can flow automatically between Acorn and your external systems, reducing manual work and minimising the risk of data inconsistencies.

Advanced Reporting Capabilities

Real-Time Reporting

API integrations support real-time data transfer, meaning your external analytics tools can access the latest learning performance data as it occurs. This enables live dashboards and up-to-the-minute reporting that reflects your organisation's current training and development status.

Advanced Data Analysis

By connecting Acorn to platforms like Power BI, Tableau, or Snowflake, you unlock advanced analytical capabilities including:

• Complex data transformations and enrichment using Fivetran or similar ETL tools
• Multi-dimensional analysis across learning, HR, and business metrics
• Predictive analytics and trend forecasting
• Custom visualisations tailored to your organisation's specific reporting needs
• Integration with broader business intelligence initiatives

Administration and Permissions

Acorn's integration capabilities are supported by a flexible administration framework. Your organisation can maintain decentralised administration with department-level super users, hierarchical permissions, role-based access control, and custom permission sets. This ensures that integration configuration and data access are governed appropriately within your organisation's security and compliance requirements.

Tenant Management and System Transfers

For organisations managing multiple instances or consolidating systems, Acorn includes a Tenancy Swap function that assists in the movement of users from one tenant to another. This capability is particularly valuable when integrating multiple learning environments or migrating to new infrastructure.

Getting Started

To begin integrating Acorn PLMS with your external analytics tools:

1. Review the available integration options and determine which platforms best serve your reporting needs
2. Consult the Open API documentation to understand data availability and technical requirements
3. Plan your data mapping strategy, identifying which Acorn metrics align with your analytics platform's data model
4. Work with your IT team to configure the integration using REST API connections or native connectors
5. Test data flows and validate that metrics appear correctly in your external analytics platform
6. Establish automated synchronisation schedules to keep your analytics current

For detailed integration specifications and technical guidance, refer to the Acorn Integrations documentation. Your organisation's implementation team can provide additional support during configuration and deployment.

Prebuilt & Standard Reports Prebuilt & Standard Reports

Acorn PLMS offers a comprehensive suite of 19 distinct report types designed to meet the diverse informational needs of your organisation. These prebuilt and standard reports provide immediate visibility into your training programme's performance, learner progress, and compliance status without requiring custom development or advanced technical expertise.

Overview of Report Capabilities

The prebuilt reports in Acorn cover essential tracking areas including completion rates, enrollment data, compliance metrics, learner progress, and complete training history. You can generate and export up to 17 types of reports directly from the system, making it straightforward to access the data your organisation needs for decision-making and compliance documentation.

Acorn's reporting functionality has been a key differentiator for many customers who have specifically chosen the platform for its comprehensive and accessible reporting features. Whether you need a quick overview or detailed analytics, the system provides the tools to generate meaningful insights from your training data.

Tracking Completion and Progress

You can access user, completion, and progress reports to track employee advancement toward course completion and certification. These reports provide visibility into individual learner journeys, helping you identify who is on track and who may need additional support or reminders.

Acorn also tracks training hours, completions, expirations, and recertifications in detail. Administrators can generate reports per user, cohort, or content item, with built-in visibility over upcoming expiries and recertification requirements. This proactive approach enables you to manage compliance and plan workforce development based on evidence-derived insights.

Enrollment and Assignment Tracking

For organisations integrating external training providers, Acorn captures and reports on critical data points including assignment dates, enrollment dates, start times, and completion times. This comprehensive tracking ensures you have full visibility into your learners' engagement with both internal and external training resources.

You can also report on pass/fail metrics and scores for quizzes and assessments, providing detailed performance data for individual learners or groups. When external courses are completed, custom certificates can be built and added to content to be awarded automatically upon completion—creating a complete audit trail of certification.

Cost and Compliance Analysis

Acorn enables cost analysis by allowing you to add training costs to content and report on them alongside other metrics. Reports can be displayed in multiple formats, including bar and line graphs, making it easy to visualise trends. This capability is particularly valuable if you need to analyse training cost trends by location or department, supporting budget planning and ROI analysis.

The platform's compliance reporting features help you maintain the evidence and documentation necessary for regulatory requirements. By combining completion data, certification records, and training history in a single searchable format, you can quickly generate compliance reports to demonstrate training completion and competency validation.

Capturing Feedback and Performance Data

Beyond completion metrics, Acorn captures training scores and course feedback provided through feedback forms. This allows you to gather qualitative insights alongside quantitative performance data, giving you a more complete picture of training effectiveness and learner satisfaction.

Automation and Accessibility

You can set up automated report scheduling to ensure administrators and managers receive reports directly to their email inboxes on a custom schedule that suits your organisation's needs. This eliminates manual report generation tasks and ensures stakeholders stay informed without extra effort.

For organisations with more advanced analytics needs, Acorn provides flexible options beyond standard reports. Administrators and Reporting Officers can create ad-hoc custom reports using the system's built-in reporting tools by adding filters such as user demographic data and custom user fields to existing reports. This allows you to tailor standard reports to answer specific business questions without waiting for custom development.

Advanced Analytics and Integration

For complex or non-standard reporting requirements, Acorn offers custom report development as a professional service. Pricing is based on complexity, development time, and data processing needs, allowing you to scale your reporting capabilities as your organisation grows.

Additionally, Acorn's API enables your organisation to pull data free of charge for use in Power BI, data warehouses, or other third-party reporting tools. This integration capability provides maximum flexibility if you maintain reporting infrastructure outside of Acorn or require deep analytics and custom visualisation.

Dashboards for Real-Time Insights

In addition to standard reports, Acorn provides configurable dashboards that offer real-time visibility into key metrics and trends. Dashboards complement standard reports by providing at-a-glance summaries of critical data points, supporting quick decision-making and ongoing programme monitoring.

Getting Started

To begin using Acorn's prebuilt reports, access the Reporting section of your account. Standard reports can be run immediately with default parameters, or you can apply filters and customisations to focus on specific user groups, locations, or training content. For guidance on running reports and building dashboards, refer to the related resources linked below.

Report Export Formats Report Export Formats

Acorn PLMS provides flexible data export capabilities that allow you to extract reports and analytics in formats suited to your organization's analysis and reporting needs. Whether you need quick external analysis or enterprise-level data warehouse integration, Acorn supports multiple export options.

Supported Export Formats

You can export Acorn reports in the following formats:

CSV (Comma-Separated Values) CSV format is ideal for data portability and compatibility across platforms. You can export reports to CSV directly from the reporting interface, making it easy to share data with stakeholders who use spreadsheet applications or other tools for further analysis.

Microsoft Excel Excel export is a Priority 1 requirement in Acorn PLMS, ensuring robust support for exporting results, metrics, and analysis directly to Excel format. This format is particularly useful for organizations that rely on Excel for data manipulation, pivot tables, and custom analysis workflows.

Exporting Reports

Acorn PLMS provides a library of base reports that you can customize before export. The export workflow allows you to:

• Apply filters to narrow down your data to specific criteria
• Add additional fields to the report to capture the metrics your organization requires
• Download the configured report to CSV or Excel format

This flexibility means you can tailor each export to match your specific reporting requirements without needing to perform post-export data manipulation.

Downloading Visualizations

Beyond tabular report exports, you can also download data visualizations and charts generated within the Acorn platform. This capability allows you to incorporate platform-generated charts directly into presentations, dashboards, or other documentation.

Scheduled Reports and Automated Distribution

For recurring reporting needs, you can schedule reports to run automatically and be emailed to designated stakeholders. This approach eliminates manual export steps and ensures your organization receives timely data on a consistent cadence. Recipients can access the latest metrics without needing to log into the system themselves.

Advanced Integration and Data Warehouse Access

REST API for Custom Reporting

For organizations requiring advanced reporting capabilities or data warehouse integration, Acorn PLMS provides full API access to LMS data. The REST API allows your technical team to:

• Programmatically retrieve learning data and metrics
• Ingest Acorn data into your organization's data warehouse
• Build custom reporting solutions tailored to your specific business processes
• Integrate Acorn data with other enterprise systems

This capability is particularly valuable for HR reporting workflows where you may need to combine LMS data with other HR systems or perform complex analysis across multiple data sources.

Integration with Business Intelligence Tools

Using the API, your organization can connect Acorn PLMS to popular business intelligence and visualization platforms such as Microsoft Power BI. Once data is ingested into your preferred BI tool, you can:

• Build advanced visualizations and interactive dashboards
• Perform complex cross-system analysis
• Create automated reports that combine learning data with other organizational metrics
• Share insights across your organization in a centralized analytics environment

This approach gives your organization the flexibility to leverage your existing BI investments while maintaining Acorn as the authoritative source for learning performance data.

Choosing the Right Export Method

Consider your use case when selecting an export format or integration approach:

Use CSV or Excel export when: - You need a one-time export for external analysis - Recipients prefer to work with spreadsheet applications - Your reporting timeline is flexible and manual extraction is acceptable - You require data in the most portable, widely-compatible format

Use scheduled email reports when: - You have recurring reporting needs with consistent recipients - You want to reduce manual report generation overhead - Stakeholders need regular updates without direct system access - You need to distribute reports to multiple recipients automatically

Use the REST API when: - You require programmatic access to learning data - You need to integrate Acorn data with other systems - You plan to build custom analytics or data warehouse solutions - Your organization uses business intelligence tools like Power BI - You require real-time or near-real-time data access

Getting Started

To export a report from Acorn PLMS, navigate to your desired report in the Reporting & Analytics section. Apply any filters or field customizations needed, then select the export format (CSV or Excel). The system will generate and download your file immediately.

For API access and data warehouse integration, contact your Acorn administrator or refer to the API documentation to configure your integration.

All export formats maintain data integrity and include all relevant fields from your configured report, ensuring consistency between your source data in Acorn and your exported outputs.

Role-Scoped Reporting Role-Scoped Reporting

Role-scoped reporting is a core feature of Acorn PLMS that controls who can access which data within your organisation's reporting suite. By restricting report visibility based on user role and permissions, you ensure that each stakeholder—from frontline managers to executive administrators—sees only the data relevant to their responsibilities.

Understanding Role-Scoped Access

Acorn PLMS implements a hierarchical reporting permission structure that aligns with your organisational hierarchy. This means:

• Managers view reports limited to their direct teams and departmental data
• Supervisors and team leads access reporting for their assigned cohorts
• Administrators retain full visibility across the entire organisation
• Reporting officers receive customized reporting access tailored to their specific role

This tiered approach protects sensitive personnel and performance data while democratising access to relevant insights across your leadership structure.

Available Reports by Role

Acorn PLMS provides comprehensive reporting capabilities that vary in scope depending on your assigned role:

Enrolment and Completion Reporting

Your organisation can generate detailed reports on learner enrolments and completion milestones. These reports support tracking participation rates and progress against organisational learning objectives. Managers can monitor their team's engagement, while administrators see organisation-wide adoption metrics and completion trends.

Role, Team, and Directorate Reporting

Reports organised by role, team, and directorate enable you to understand learning distribution and progress across your structure. These views are essential for identifying gaps in capability development and ensuring equitable access to learning opportunities. Managers access team-level views, while administrators can drill down to compare performance across multiple departments or divisions.

Capability Gap Analysis

Acorn PLMS generates reports highlighting capability gaps by role, region, or team. These heatmaps and summary views help your organisation prioritise learning interventions where they're needed most. By identifying which roles or teams underperform against capability standards, you can allocate resources more effectively and target development initiatives strategically.

Individual Qualifications and Career Development

Reports on individual qualifications and professional development progression support career planning and talent management. These records provide visibility into each learner's credentials, certifications, and development journey, enabling managers to identify high-potential employees and succession planning opportunities.

Assessment Completion Tracking

Detailed assessment completion reports allow you to monitor participation rates and identify learners who may need support or reminders. Timeline indicators and status dashboards provide at-a-glance visibility into assessment progress and upcoming deadlines.

The Reporting Officer Role

Acorn PLMS includes a dedicated Reporting Officer role that grants customized reporting access beyond standard manager or administrator permissions. This role is ideal for:

• Learning and Development (L&D) directors who need flexible, cross-functional reporting
• HR business partners requiring detailed people analytics
• Data analysts supporting strategic reporting initiatives
• Quality assurance teams monitoring compliance and completion metrics

If you hold a Reporting Officer role, you can pull and generate reports according to your organisation's custom access configuration. Speak with your system administrator to confirm which reports are available to your Reporting Officer profile.

How to Access Role-Scoped Reports

1. Log in to Acorn PLMS with your credentials
2. Navigate to the Reporting & Analytics section
3. Select the report type relevant to your role (enrolments, completions, capability gaps, etc.)
4. Review the data automatically filtered to your permission level—your team's data if you're a manager, all data if you're an administrator
5. Export or share reports as needed within your organisation's data governance policies

Data Available at Different Milestones

Acorn PLMS supports reporting at key milestones throughout the learning journey:

• Enrolment milestones: Track who has enrolled in learning activities
• Progress milestones: Monitor ongoing completion and engagement
• Completion milestones: Capture finalised learning records and certifications
• Compliance milestones: Flag mandatory training and certification deadlines

Managers receive alerts and summary views for their team's milestone progress, while administrators can analyse trends across the entire organisation.

Limitations and Workarounds

While Acorn PLMS delivers robust reporting for adoption, assessments, and capability gaps, certain advanced analytics are not currently built into standard reports. These include:

• Project-level views and project-specific reporting
• Calibration analysis and detailed variance tracking
• Compliance flags for regulatory requirements

For these insights, your organisation can extract key data points from standard reports and analyse them manually using spreadsheets or business intelligence tools. Contact your system administrator for guidance on data export options and reporting best practices.

Best Practices for Role-Scoped Reporting

• Review permissions regularly: Ensure each user's role reflects their current responsibilities
• Establish reporting schedules: Set regular intervals (weekly, monthly, quarterly) for key reports
• Document report usage: Track which reports support your decision-making to optimise your reporting portfolio
• Train stakeholders: Help managers and team leads understand how to interpret and act on their role-scoped reports
• Escalate insights: Use manager reports as input for supervisor and administrator dashboards to build a cohesive view

Support and Configuration

Your system administrator controls role-scoped report access and can adjust permissions as your organisation evolves. If you believe you need access to reports currently restricted by your role, or if you require custom reporting configurations, contact your administrator or your L&D team to discuss your requirements.

Scheduled & Automated Reports Scheduled & Automated Reports

Manually generating and distributing reports on a recurring basis can be time-consuming and inefficient. Acorn PLMS streamlines this process by allowing you to schedule reports to run automatically at intervals you define, then distribute them directly to designated stakeholders via email. This capability ensures your organisation maintains consistent oversight without requiring manual intervention.

Overview of Scheduled Reports

Scheduled reports in Acorn PLMS automate the entire report lifecycle: generation, formatting, and distribution. Rather than running the same report manually each day or week, you can configure a report once and have it execute automatically at your specified intervals. This reduces administrative burden and ensures stakeholders receive timely, up-to-date data when they need it.

The system generates reports from existing presets you have already created, so you can leverage your current report configurations without rebuilding them. Once scheduled, these reports run on your defined schedule and are delivered directly to recipients' inboxes, removing the need for users to manually access the system to retrieve data.

Report Scheduling Capabilities

Flexible Scheduling Options

You can configure scheduled reports to run at intervals that match your organisation's reporting cadence:

• Daily – Reports generate and send every day, ideal for high-frequency performance monitoring.
• Weekly – Reports run once per week, suitable for departmental or team-level reviews.
• Monthly – Reports generate monthly for broader trend analysis and executive summaries.

Each schedule includes a specific time setting, so reports generate and distribute at times convenient for your recipients. This flexibility allows you to align report delivery with business workflows and decision-making cycles.

Batch Generation

Scheduled reports are generated in batch mode, meaning Acorn processes them automatically without consuming user resources or requiring manual trigger actions. The system handles all generation tasks in the background, ensuring reports are ready and distributed at the scheduled time.

Report Delivery and Format

Scheduled reports are delivered as exported file attachments via email, with support for the following formats:

• Excel (.xlsx) – Provides full spreadsheet functionality for analysis and manipulation.
• CSV (.csv) – Enables compatibility with a wide range of systems and tools.

Recipients receive reports directly in their email inboxes, allowing them to access the data immediately without logging into Acorn PLMS. This is particularly valuable for stakeholders who may not need regular system access but benefit from periodic performance insights.

Assigning Reports to Recipients and Roles

You can assign scheduled reports to specific user roles within your organisation, ensuring the right stakeholders receive the right data. This role-based distribution approach streamlines access control and ensures reports reach intended audiences automatically.

Scheduled reports can be configured to send to:

• Individual users – Assign reports directly to named administrators or stakeholders.
• User roles – Configure reports to distribute to all users within a specific role (e.g., managers, compliance officers, training coordinators).

This capability is especially useful for organisations with multiple departments or business units, as each group can receive tailored reports without manual redistribution efforts.

Data Visualizations and Analytics

Acorn PLMS includes in-platform data visualizations and charts that provide immediate insights into your learning performance data. These visualizations are embedded within reports and can be viewed directly in the system or downloaded separately.

When you schedule a report, recipients gain access to these visual analytics through the delivered report files. For users who prefer interactive exploration, visualizations are also available within the Acorn interface, allowing stakeholders to drill down into specific data points as needed.

Customized Email Notifications

Email templates for scheduled reports can be customized and branded to match your organisation's identity and communication standards. This ensures report delivery aligns with your corporate messaging and provides a consistent user experience.

You can tailor notification content, sender information, and branding elements to reinforce your organisation's identity and make reports feel like part of your standard communication cadence rather than system-generated messages.

Practical Applications

CPD and Compliance Reporting

Organisations commonly schedule reports such as the CPD (Continuing Professional Development) Report to run automatically. These reports can track compliance, learning progress, and professional development metrics across your user base. Scheduling ensures compliance officers and managers receive up-to-date compliance snapshots without manual effort.

Stakeholder Oversight

Scheduled reports support proactive oversight by delivering key performance indicators to decision-makers on a predictable schedule. Executives, managers, and coordinators can rely on consistent reporting rather than requesting ad-hoc reports, improving efficiency and supporting data-driven decision-making.

Reduced Administrative Effort

By eliminating the need to manually generate and distribute the same reports repeatedly, you free administrative resources for higher-value tasks. The time saved across weekly or monthly reporting cycles can be substantial, particularly in larger organisations.

Setting Up Scheduled Reports

To configure a scheduled report, you begin with an existing report preset in Acorn PLMS. The scheduling interface allows you to specify the recurrence interval (daily, weekly, or monthly), the execution time, and the recipients (users or roles). Once configured, the report runs automatically on your defined schedule.

For detailed step-by-step instructions on setting up scheduled reports, including role assignment and recipient configuration, refer to the complete setup guide.

Best Practices

• Start with existing presets – Use reports you have already configured rather than creating new ones solely for scheduling.
• Consider recipient timezone – When scheduling reports for geographically distributed teams, account for timezone differences in delivery times.
• Review periodically – Regularly review which reports are scheduled and who receives them to ensure ongoing relevance and accuracy.
• Test before rolling out – Send a test scheduled report to a small group before distributing to all intended recipients.

Summary

Scheduled and automated reports in Acorn PLMS eliminate manual reporting overhead and ensure your organisation receives timely performance data. By configuring reports once and allowing the system to handle generation and distribution automatically, you can maintain consistent stakeholder communication while freeing resources for strategic work.