Managing Scheduled Tasks

Accessing the Scheduled Tasks List

Scheduled tasks can be viewed and managed by navigating to System -> Scheduled Tasks. 

Open

All tasks are listed with information under the following headings:

• Enabled - Shows whether the task is scheduled or disabled 

• Cron Expression - the cron expression defining the frequency at which the task is executed and its human readable description below

• Last Run- Info about the task's last execution (date and time, duration and possible error)

• Next Run - the date and time when the task is next scheduled to be executed. This column will be empty if the task is disabled. If the task is currently running, an animated progress indicator will be displayed instead.

• Actions - Options to edit the task, run it manually or cancel the task (if it's running)

Running a Task Manually

To run a task manually, head to the Scheduled Tasks list and choose  Run Now in the Actions column. It will run immediately. 

Editing a Task

To edit a scheduled task, go to the Edit Task screen by choosing Edit in the Actions column.

Open

Editing a task

Types of Tasks

Cron Expressions

A cron expression is a string of 5 'time interval' fields that defines the frequency at which a task is executed. Each of these fields can be expressed as either a numerical value or a special character, and each field is separated by a space character. 

The following graph shows what a cron expression consists of:

^{* * * * * | | | | | | | | | +---- Day of the Week (range: 0-6 or SUN-SAT, 0 standing for Sunday) | | | +------ Month of the Year (range: 1-12 or JAN-DEC) | | +-------- Day of the Month (range: 1-31) | +---------- Hour (range: 0-23) +------------ Minute (range: 0-59)}

• Any of these 5 fields may be an asterisk (*). This would mean the entire range of possible values, i.e. each minute, each hour, etc.

• Any field may contain a list of values separated by commas, (e.g. 1,3,7) or a range of values (two integers separated by a hyphen, e.g. 1-5).

• After an asterisk ( * ) or a range of values, you can use the slash character (/) to specify that values are repeated over and over with a certain interval between them. For example, you can write "0-23/2" in Hour field to specify that a certain action should be performed every two hours (it will have the same effect as "0,2,4,6,8,10,12,14,16,18,20,22"); value "*/4" in Minute field means that the action should be performed every 4 minutes, "1-30/3" means the same as "1,4,7,10,13,16,19,22,25,28".

• In the Month and Day of Week fields, you can use the names of months or days of weeks abbreviated to the first three letters ("JAN,FEB,...,DEC" or "MON,TUE,...,SUN") instead of their numeric values.

Cron Expression Examples

Here are some full examples: