Hello,
At our studio, we often generate reports to send to clients, which include shot data relating to the delivery of the project. At present we query data on Shotgun and input it to an Excel sheet, either manually or via a script. We would very much like to automate this process and generate reports straight out of the Shotgun web app. Is there a way to do this and/or any best practices to go about it?
Any ideas would be appreciated!
I found this useful article: Help
Wondering if there’s any way to export a report page or share it externally?
Hey Viktor,
I am glad you found that doc. I was about to link it here as well.
The is a really good way how to create a customised visual overview to follow up on the project status and share the information.
You can design it as you wish, every graft is interactive and you can export/share them in different formats ( like PDF)
Hi Linda,
Thanks for your comment! Yeah, playing around with a visual design overview page now, it seems to be flexible enough for our purposes. How would you go about exporting/sharing these?
Hey,
So here is doc with videos and explanations how to customize and save the overview in different formats. 
Cheers,
Linda
@Linda thanks for the doc. It’s very useful, but I still cannot seem to find a way to export my entire page to PDF, as far as I can see the doc only refers to exporting graphs as images and other formats. Could you please specify if/how this can be done for the entire visually designed overview page? Thanks!
Hey @viktor_petrov,
Yes, you’re correct, the export to .pdf is just for individual graphs. A cheeky hack if you want to make a .pdf of the whole page is to use the browser print option and save as a .pdf.
@DavidMason thanks for chiming in. Right, I figured I could do that, but as you say it’s hacky and not ideal since users would have to manually select the printable area as default printing from the browser includes the Shotgun header with all the different navigation pages. Also, some graphs disappear this way…
It would be ideal to just have an export button on visually designed overview pages so these can be easily exported as PDFs. I’ve submitted this as a request to the Shotgun road map - hope it’s simple enough to implement soon 
Hey Victor,
Yep, it is not the smoothest way at the moment, but at least there is a workaround. So thank you for submitting it to the roadmap and our team will surely consider it
Stay safe and happy Friday!
Joining this request, this feature will be highly appreciated, mainly for the ability to be able to use thumbnails/images in the PDF, and maintain the visual look of the page.
Or even just the spreadsheet but that will also include the Thumbnail in the cell
Was this considered since this post started?
Thank you,
Just bumping this thread as the ability to produce and export controllabel reports such as delivery sheets has been sorely missing for me for 11 years now.
Printing as pdf produces artifacts (e.g. overlaps the ShtioGrid logo with other parts of the page) and shows things I don’t watnt the client to see.
I would love to see the ability to design a print view that actually exports as expected.
So I just spent a lot of time printing custom canvas pages wth graphs to pdf. As usualy the font comes through as light grey on white, which is impossible to read. No adjustments on SG side fixed this. So I ended up deleting the pages with graphs in the pdf, then exporting the individual graphs, then comping those together (while cursing a lot), the adding the result into the pdf that exported fine (the grid view).
Please, please, please add a modern, controllable and reliable way to producer report pdfs with graphs etc. It’s a massive pain every time I habe to send a report (which is every Friday).
Why has this been ignored for a decade now when it’s such an important step???
Totally agree with @frank - this is something we’ve now had to develop internally by populating HTML templates with data via ShotGrid API, just to generate a simple shot progress list report, for example. This is desperately needed for smooth client interactions.
One of the biggest killers is that status icons are not included in “printed” pdfs.
How do people work around that?
I guess I could group by status but that works against keeping the shots in cut order. I guess I could make up a custom fiels that just shows text per status and update that via the shotgun event daemon to match the actual shot status field (in other words create a text version of the status field).
But really we shouldn’t have to do any of this just to be able to print a status report, right?!
Hi Everyone,
I’ll chime in on this thread as well (sorry I’m over a year late). I cannot express enough how important this feature is for any workflow. I’m freelance from show to show and we need to generate these reports for both vendors and studios. It’s a constant ask that needs constant updating and shotgrid does not supply adequate tools to efficiently generate these. Which is a shame because all our data is already in there. ShotGrid tends to just puke out an unpolished CSV that takes a lot of cleanup to be presentable to executives. Never mind photos…
Best and fastest workaround I’ve found is to use Filemaker Pro. It takes a lot of set-up but pays off for it’s speed and clean look in the long run. Create a small database that mirrors your ShotGrid. Only use fields that you need to export for reports (usually 10-15 fields actually need to be exported). Be sure to name the fields the same in both databases so they auto line up with no in-between cleanup. Create your export reporting templates in Filemaker that look pretty and presentable to the people signing your paychecks. Export from shotGrid into Filemaker (for those savvy programers you can automate this step). Then export reports to your heart’s desire!
For your photos. I get thumbnails from editorial and they can export the files named with the shot names from an easy export from Avid. Filemaker can auto import those photos by looking in a “thumbnail” folder and matching the shot names. This process can be used to update the images as your work progresses. Unfortunately, I have not found an easy batch export thumbnails out of ShotGrid so you could get images of the latest versions. This means your images are always a little delayed. Usually not a problem.
Hopefully this helps and if anyone knows any more shortcuts let me know! But seriously, ShotGrid needs better exporting functions as Studios are getting more demanding on reports and updates.
Hi all,
Just want to join in and try to bump this for SG. Pretty sure I requested printing features as far back as 2016 when I first tested Shotgun for client-side use. It’s frankly ridiculous that this simple important thing of formatted PDF exports hasn’t been done! I have used FMP and Excel as workarounds, but a system this ubiquitous and costly should not need workarounds for a simple Report Export function. Seriously, SG, please respond. Thank you.
Hello, this is NOT solved. Please see the rest of this thread. No one should have to hire a web dev to create custom report PDFs. This is a need that has been unaddressed by SG for many years and I would like to see a real response. Thank you!
Where do we submit this request? I am voting for this as well, though it seems to be going on for many years. I am interested in exporting my schedule as I see it with the gantt display.
Hi,
Same here, would need to be able to make client client deliveries reports, with thumbnails.
Regards
Donat
