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In this article we cover how to use the display date a Job was ran/executed instead of the current date, using the Page Info Label in Finished Reports to prevent misleading dates at the top of your reports (current date vs execution date).

Why Use The Execution Date?

It can be misleading to be viewing reports that were ran months ago while seeing the current date at the top of the report.

How To Use The Execution Date In Insights

1. Open/Create your View and run it. Then go into the Finished Reports Designer.

2. Add the Page Info label into the report. (pageInfo1 if first page info label in the report)

3. Verify / Set the name as this will be used setting up the Job. (Case/Spelling Sensitive)

4. Save the Finished Report then go into the Job Setup of the scheduler.

5. Create / Open the Job that will export the new Finished Report to Insights using the Scheduler.

6. Set the Date Label under the Insights section to the name of the Page Info Label. (pageInfo1)

7. Run the Job multiple times and then go to Insights and preview / verify the Page Info matches the status bar.

Note: If the date/time are not matching up to what you would expect, the files may have been modified and are now being displayed based on the modification date. The status bar at the bottom of VDM will indicate the time the file was created (Date Created) where the data in the list for Select Data uses the date the file was modified. (Date Modified) 

Below are the steps to verify if there is a difference in the Date Created and the Date Modified.

Steps To Verify Date Created Vs Date Modified

1. Browse to your Insights data storage location (where the job's execution is set to export the Insight data - you'll see it under the Insights properties). Inside the main insights folder browse to your Job, then the View name, then you should see a folder that represents the Execution name. Inside the Execution folder there will be XML data files.

2. Verify the dates you are seeing in Insights match. To enable columns in the field explorer right click in the column headers and enable them.