A few questions on how report units are used by scheduled pixel-perfect reports:
Does each attachment count as a separate unit? For example, is a schedule sending three tables as CSVs one unit or three? Would the same three tables sent as one XLSX be one unit?
Is a small file, such as a CSV of a few hundred rows, rounded up to a full unit? How are pages measured for CSV and XLSX?
On an RLS dashboard, is each recipient’s report a separate unit? If so, is a schedule to a single recipient one unit?
Does a failed schedule use a unit?
Where can we see report unit usage, ideally per schedule? Cost Explorer and the Cost and Usage dashboard don’t separate it out.
Can we schedule specific tables without other visuals on the sheet causing the job to fail, or do we need a separate sheet with just those tables?
This one isn’t documented. When you pick tables for an Excel schedule, they all go into one workbook (docs). But nothing published says whether three CSVs from one schedule count as three units versus one for a single workbook. I’d confirm with AWS Support or run a small test schedule before scaling up.
A report unit covers up to 100 pages or 100 MB per generated report (pricing), and each report uses at least one unit. An AWS team member noted that a 7-page report used one unit per send, so a few-hundred-row CSV should be 1 unit too. CSV and Excel aren’t measured in pages; AWS’s 2023 Excel export post says they’re billed on file size instead.
Yes. QuickSight generates each recipient’s report separately based on their permissions, and the same AWS team member confirmed each one uses its own unit. A schedule to a single recipient is 1 unit, as long as it’s under 100 pages or 100 MB.
This isn’t documented. An AWS team member has said a unit is used when a report is generated, but I haven’t found anything that covers what happens when a schedule fails, so this one’s for AWS Support.
I’m not aware of a report unit counter in the console. In that same billing thread, when another user’s Cost Explorer view didn’t break it out, the AWS team pointed to the raw cost and usage data from a standard export in AWS Data Exports, which is separate from the prebuilt Cost and Usage dashboard. That user’s export showed report units by day, but I haven’t found a documented per-schedule breakdown. To match those daily numbers to your schedules, the report’s Scheduling > Recent snapshots list shows the snapshots generated for it, kept for up to a year (docs).
You don’t need a separate sheet. Turn on CSV or Excel in the schedule and pick up to 5 table or pivot table visuals from any sheet, and only those go into the export (docs). Whether a problem in a visual you didn’t select can still fail the job isn’t documented. If schedules have already failed, one documented cause is the schedule starting while a dataset refresh is still running, so make sure refreshes finish first (Knowledge Center).
For the undocumented parts, I’d recommend creating an AWS Support Ticket for more information.