How to Schedule & Export Reports in Freshdesk

Export vs schedule: two different jobs

Before touching any menus, it helps to separate the two things people lump together as "reporting."

Exporting is a one-time pull. You open a report, hit export, and Freshdesk generates a file and emails it to you (or lets you download it) right now. It's the move for an ad-hoc question — "what did last quarter's SLA look like?" — where you don't need it again.

Scheduling is a standing order. You configure a recurrence once — daily, weekly, or monthly — and Freshdesk regenerates the report and emails it to your chosen recipients on that cadence without anyone opening the app. It's the move for a report someone needs to see every week, like a Monday-morning volume-and-SLA summary for the ops channel.

Both live inside Freshdesk Analytics, and both are gated to the same plans. Per Freshworks' documentation on exporting report data, export and scheduling are available on Freshdesk Pro and Enterprise (and the legacy Estate/Forest tiers), plus Freshdesk Omni Pro and Enterprise. If you're on a Free or Growth plan, the options below won't appear.

Step 1: Export a report on demand

Start with the simplest case — you want the report as a file, once.

1. Open Analytics and select the report you want.
2. Click the Export icon below the search bar.
3. Choose Export report from the dropdown.
4. Select the pages you want to include — you don't have to send the whole report — and click Export.

Freshdesk then generates the report and sends it as a PDF to your registered email address. Note the constraint here: full-report export supports PDF only. There's no CSV option at the whole-report level, which matters if your finance team wants numbers they can pivot rather than a formatted document.

There's also an Export to Email dialog reached from the same Export menu, which lets you pick exactly which report pages to send in that one email before firing it off. It's the on-demand equivalent of a schedule — same page-selection control, but a single send rather than a recurrence.

Step 2: Get CSV or XLSX out at the widget level

If a PDF isn't enough — you want the raw rows — you go one level deeper, to the individual widget rather than the whole report.

1. Open the report and expand the widget you care about.
2. Click the three horizontal dots (widget options).
3. Choose Export to Email or Download, then pick your format.

At the widget level you can export both the graph data (the summarized, visualized values behind the chart) and the underlying data (the original, detailed rows). Underlying data is where the raw ticket-level detail lives — and you can add up to 20 custom fields to that export via the gear icon, per Freshworks' export documentation. Widget exports support CSV, XLSX, and PDF, which is why teams that need spreadsheet-ready output work at the widget level, not the report level.

Step 3: Schedule a recurring email

Now the useful part — set it once, receive it forever. Per Freshworks' guide to scheduling reports in Analytics, the path is the same Export menu.

1. Open the report, click Export report, then choose Schedule email.
2. Enter your recipients and a schedule name.
3. Choose a recurrence:

• Daily — set the time of day.
• Weekly — set the day of the week and a time.
• Monthly — either a specific date (e.g. the 19th of every month) or a day-based pattern (e.g. the first or last Thursday of every month), plus the time.

1. Set the start date, time, end date, and timezone. The end date defaults to one year from the start date but you can change it.
2. Enter an email subject and description so recipients know what landed in their inbox.
3. Confirm the file type and click Schedule email.

One format quirk to internalize: scheduled full reports go out as PDF only. If you need a scheduled CSV or XLSX, you have to schedule from an individual widget and pick that format there — and the combined PDF+CSV option that's available for on-demand downloads is not available for schedules. So a "send finance the raw SLA numbers as a spreadsheet every Monday" requirement means scheduling the specific widget, not the report.

To find and edit everything you've set up, go to Analytics → Settings → Schedules, where Freshdesk lists all scheduled widgets and reports in one place.

Step 4: Automate raw data exports for a warehouse

There's a separate mechanism worth knowing if your goal is feeding a BI tool or data warehouse rather than emailing a PDF. Under Analytics → Settings → Data Exports, administrators and supervisors can schedule recurring exports of whole modules — Tickets, Timesheet, Surveys, Survey results, Articles, and Triage — on a Daily, Weekly, or Monthly cadence.

These land as CSV, delivered either as an email attachment or via an API link you can pull programmatically, and the generated files stay available for 30 days. This is the route to choose when you want the data out of Freshdesk and into your own stack, rather than a formatted summary for a human to read.

The honest limits — and where an AI layer picks up

Freshdesk's reporting is solid at the job it's built for: it turns ticket history into scheduled, shareable documents, and it does so reliably. But it's worth being clear about the edges.

Formats are fragmented. Full reports schedule as PDF only; spreadsheet output means dropping to the widget level and scheduling widgets one at a time; PDF+CSV can't be scheduled at all. Assembling a single clean weekly deliverable often means stitching several exports together.

Analytics Pro is a separate tier. The richer curated reports and deeper metric definitions sit behind Analytics Pro / higher Freshdesk plans, so what you can export depends on what you can build — and that's gated. The Freshworks marketplace and community connectors fill some gaps, and for warehouse pipelines they're a genuinely good option.

And fundamentally, a report is a rear-view mirror. It tells you that first-response time slipped last week or that 40% of tickets were the same three password-reset questions — but the report itself does nothing about it. Closing that loop is still a human opening tickets and typing.

That last gap is where an AI agent layer fits, and it's worth weighing the build-versus-buy tradeoff before reaching for one. The category of AI agents for customer service exists to act on exactly the patterns your reports expose. Macha is one such layer: it runs on top of the Freshdesk you already use as a native connector — it does not replace your help desk, your Analytics, or your schedules. You connect Macha to Freshdesk with your subdomain and API key, and it works the same tickets your reports measure: drafting and sending grounded replies, triaging by intent so priority is right the first time, and pulling live order or account status through a custom tool that turns a REST API into something the agent can call. If your weekly export keeps surfacing the same repetitive volume, that's the seam to automate Freshdesk with AI so next week's report shows less of it. (Macha's connector is for Freshdesk specifically — not Freshchat, Freshservice, or Freshcaller — and credits are consumed per AI action, not per resolution; the pricing page has the breakdown.)

The clean division of labour: keep Freshdesk Analytics as the source of truth for what happened and who needs to see it, and layer an agent on top for the part a report can't do — actually reducing the numbers you're reporting on.

FAQ

Where do I schedule a report in Freshdesk? Open the report in Analytics, click the Export icon below the search bar, choose Export report → Schedule email, then set recipients, recurrence (Daily, Weekly, or Monthly), timezone, subject, and description. Manage every schedule afterward at Analytics → Settings → Schedules.

What file formats can Freshdesk export reports in? A full report exports and schedules as PDF only. To get CSV or XLSX, export or schedule from an individual widget, where both graph data and underlying (raw) data are available. The PDF+CSV combined download can't be scheduled.

Do I need a specific plan to schedule reports? Yes. Report export and scheduling in Analytics are available on Freshdesk Pro and Enterprise (and legacy Estate/Forest), plus Freshdesk Omni Pro and Enterprise. On lower plans the export and schedule options don't appear.

How do I export raw ticket data for a data warehouse? Use Analytics → Settings → Data Exports to schedule module-level exports (Tickets, Surveys, Triage, and more) as CSV, delivered by email or an API link, with files available for 30 days — this is the route for feeding a BI tool rather than emailing a PDF.

Can I add AI to Freshdesk reporting without replacing Freshdesk? Yes. An AI agent layer like Macha connects to Freshdesk as a native connector and runs on top of your existing help desk and Analytics — it doesn't replace them. Instead of just reporting on repetitive volume, it acts on it by drafting replies and triaging tickets by intent, while Freshdesk stays the system of record for your metrics and schedules.

Want next week's report to show fewer repetitive tickets, not just measure them? Start a free trial of Macha and connect it to your Freshdesk in minutes.