Recent email send summary sendstart and sendcomplete difference

Question

We send daily Welcome emails however when i run the Recent email send summary report over a period to get a monthly breakdown and report on its stats i find for some emails the start and end time are very different and the results are combined into the same row.

1. Why is this happening?
2. What would be another way to get the email send summary and its metrics over a period of time

Answer 1

Assuming these emails are Triggered Sends, it's likely that the start and end time represent the lifecycle of the JobID and when the Triggered Send Definition was published.

Triggered Send JobIDs do persist and only change when you re-publish the definition (or update a Journey email or create a new Journey version).

You could retrieve the Send SOAP API object data for your account and see how they change over time -- this data is the source for the Recent Sending Summary. Here's a sample SOAP call I wrote in Postman:

POST / HTTP/1.1
Host: https://YOURTENANTHERE.soap.marketingcloudapis.com/Service.asmx
Content-Type: text/xml

<s:Envelope xmlns:s="http://www.w3.org/2003/05/soap-envelope" xmlns:a="http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/ws/2004/08/addressing" xmlns:u="http://docs.oasis-open.org/wss/2004/01/oasis-200401-wss-wssecurity-utility-1.0.xsd">
    <s:Header>
        <a:Action s:mustUnderstand="1">Create</a:Action>
        <a:To s:mustUnderstand="1">https://YOURTENANTHERE.soap.marketingcloudapis.com/Service.asmx</a:To>
        <fueloauth xmlns="http://exacttarget.com">YOURTOKENHERE</fueloauth>
    </s:Header>
    <s:Body xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" xmlns:xsd="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema">
        <RetrieveRequestMsg xmlns="http://exacttarget.com/wsdl/partnerAPI">
            <RetrieveRequest>
                <Options>
                    <Client>
                        <ClientID>YOURMIDHERE</ClientID>
                    </Client>
                </Options>
                <ObjectType>Send</ObjectType>
                <Properties>ID</Properties>
                <Properties>PartnerKey</Properties>
                <Properties>CreatedDate</Properties>
                <Properties>ModifiedDate</Properties>
                <Properties>Client.ID</Properties>
                <Properties>Email.ID</Properties>
                <Properties>SendDate</Properties>
                <Properties>FromAddress</Properties>
                <Properties>FromName</Properties>
                <Properties>Duplicates</Properties>
                <Properties>InvalidAddresses</Properties>
                <Properties>ExistingUndeliverables</Properties>
                <Properties>ExistingUnsubscribes</Properties>
                <Properties>HardBounces</Properties>
                <Properties>SoftBounces</Properties>
                <Properties>OtherBounces</Properties>
                <Properties>ForwardedEmails</Properties>
                <Properties>UniqueClicks</Properties>
                <Properties>UniqueOpens</Properties>
                <Properties>NumberSent</Properties>
                <Properties>NumberDelivered</Properties>
                <Properties>NumberTargeted</Properties>
                <Properties>NumberErrored</Properties>
                <Properties>NumberExcluded</Properties>
                <Properties>Unsubscribes</Properties>
                <Properties>MissingAddresses</Properties>
                <Properties>Subject</Properties>
                <Properties>PreviewURL</Properties>
                <Properties>SentDate</Properties>
                <Properties>EmailName</Properties>
                <Properties>Status</Properties>
                <Properties>IsMultipart</Properties>
                <Properties>SendLimit</Properties>
                <Properties>IsAlwaysOn</Properties>
                <Properties>Additional</Properties>
                <Properties>BCCEmail</Properties>
                <Properties>EmailSendDefinition.ObjectID</Properties>
                <Properties>EmailSendDefinition.CustomerKey</Properties>
                <Properties>SendWindowOpen</Properties>
                <Properties>SendWindowClose</Properties>
            </RetrieveRequest>
        </RetrieveRequestMsg>
    </s:Body>
</s:Envelope>

If you want to automate the storage of this data, I've outlined a way to do that here on my blog.