SFTP Schedules
Using SFTP schedules to setup report/dashboard to be sent to your SFTP folders every day. SFTP Schedules allow admins/analysts to schedule a report/dashboard to be sent to an SFTP destination.
Some common use cases:
- Backup report data periodically to an SFTP server
- Deliver data regularly to your partners' servers
How It Works#
This section describes how you can set up Holistics to export report data to your SFTP server.
Configuring SFTP Integration#
To manage your SFTP connections, please visit Integrations Page
To add new SFTP connection, click Add SFTP Connection and fill the required information below
- Display name: Add integration title to manage your different connections
- Host, Port: Address of the SFTP server
- Root Path: Destination file paths will be preceded by this path.
- Username, Password: Credentials to access the SFTP server
- Holistics Public Key If you are using public key authentication instead of username/password, please add Holistics public key to your authorized keys
SFTP User Permissions#
You will need to restrict the permissions of the SFTP user on your side. Typically, you would create an user dedicated for SFTP purpose, and allow this user to only read and write files within the root path. Example here.
Setup an SFTP Schedule#
In any report, click Schedules on the toolbar, then choose New SFTP Schedule
Then fill the required information below for your schedule export
- SFTP Connection: Choose the connection you want to create export schedule, you can manage it at Integrations Page
- File path: The path of the destination file. Holistics will create folders/files if they do not exist. Otherwise, that file will be overwritten (CSV/Excel files are supported)
- Schedule: Monthly/Weekly/Daily/Hourly...
- Filter Values: Set the filter values for the report
Note: if you're on Object-based plan, each SFTP schedule will be 10 objects.
Writing Sequential Files#
Sometimes when writing to destination, you want the system to add new files (based on date/timestamp) instead of overwriting existing files.
The above will produce filenames like:
2017-05-06/sales_pivo_t_table_1494106200.xlsx2017-05-07/sales_pivo_t_table_1614106200.xlsx
The variables you can use are:
$today,$yesterday: Today or yesterday in YYYY-MM-DD$timestamp: Unix timestamp$source_title: Title of the report, in lowercase and has its special characters replaced by underscores. E.g. 'Sales@Pivo^*?t Table' -> 'sales_pivo_t_table'
SFTP Schedule Execution Flow#
A SFTP Schedule execution follows these steps:
- Execute the Query Report to get result data
- Write the result data to a temporary file in
$ROOT_PATH/.holistics_tmp/($ROOT_PATHis configured in the SFTP connection) - Prepare the destination path: create the necessary directories in the destination path if not exist
- Move the temporary file to destination path
How to Setup SFTP User on Your Server#
This section will give you a step-by-step instruction on setting up a new user on your SFTP server that is dedicated for SFTP purpose. The new user will be restricted to access a specific directory and use SFTP commands only.
Run the following commands as root.
Create the new user
Create a new directory. Later, we will make sure the SFTP user can only access this directory by configuring ChrootDirectory. It needs to be owned by user root in order for the ChrootDirectory configuration to work
Since /holistics is owned by root, new user holistics_sftp should not be allowed to write to that directory. Thus, we will create an inner directory where holistics_sftp can write to.
In this example, we are creating a new folder named exported. Later when you fill in the settings of the SFTP Connection in Holistics, you should input exported in Root Path, so that all output files will reside within this directory.
Restrict the access of new user by editing /etc/ssh/sshd_config
The above config makes sure user holistics_sftp can only read the directory /holistics and can only use SFTP commands.
Restart sshd service