Scheduler Overview

The scheduler manages long-running scheduled tasks. A scheduled task periodically triggers an action on a job or report at the specified frequency. For example, a scheduled task can start or stop a job or generate a data delivery report on a weekly or monthly basis.

A scheduled task simply triggers an action on a job or report, it does not monitor nor control the job or report. For example, if a scheduled task triggers a job start and then the scheduled task is paused, finished, or even deleted, that has no effect on the active job. Similarly, if a scheduled task triggers a job start and then the job is manually stopped, that has no effect on the scheduled task.

You can schedule task execution every specific number of minutes or on an hourly, daily, weekly, monthly, or yearly basis. You can use the UI to define a simple expression or you can define your own advanced expression using the UNIX cron expression syntax.

A scheduled task can start running immediately after creation and can continue running indefinitely. Or, you can define when a scheduled task starts and ends.

For each scheduled task, you specify a time zone to use for all the times configured for the task, including the start time, end time, and execution expression.

You can monitor scheduled tasks by viewing the number of times the task has triggered an action on a job or report. You can also view an audit of all changes made to the scheduled task.

Working with Scheduled Tasks

The Scheduler view lists all scheduled tasks that have been created for your organization.

You can complete the following actions in the Scheduler view:
  • Create scheduled tasks.
  • View scheduled task details.
  • Monitor scheduled tasks.
  • Edit scheduled tasks.
  • Pause and resume scheduled tasks.
  • Kill scheduled tasks.
  • Delete scheduled tasks.
  • Share scheduled tasks with other users and groups, as described in Permissions.

The following image shows a list of scheduled tasks in the Scheduler view. Each scheduled task is listed with the scheduled task name, expression that defines the frequency that the task triggers an action, the time zone, and status: