Making Jobs Recur on a Schedule

Any job can be set as recurring—even jobs which have already been completed. In fact, it's often the already completed jobs which you will want to make repeating. To begin the process of setting up a recurring job, follow these steps:

  1. Follow this path: System > xTuple Connect Console

  2. Select the check the "Show Completed Actions" option

  3. Results like those shown in the following screen will appear:

Completed Jobs Processed by xTuple Connect Batch Manager

For this exercise, we will reschedule the Update Actual Cost job which we originally described in the section called “Scheduling Jobs”. This job is the first one listed in the screenshot shown above. To make this a recurring job, follow these steps:

  1. Highlight the job you want to reschedule

  2. Then select the RESCHEDULE button

  3. In the "Scheduled" field, enter the first date and time you want the job to run

  4. Select the "Recurring" option

  5. Enter how frequently you want the job to run by typing a number in the "Every" field and selecting a time unit from the drop down list

  6. Enter the maximum number of copies of this job to have pending (new ones will be recreated automatically as old ones complete)

  7. The Update Actual Costs job is set to be recurring in the following screen:

Rescheduling a xTuple Connect Batch Manager Job

Once you select the SAVE button, the job will be scheduled to run as often as you specified. In our example, we scheduled the Actual Cost update to run on a weekly basis. And, since this is a resource-intensive job, we have scheduled the job to run after hours, just before midnight. For documentation and safety purposes, the recurrence is set to create no more than 2 jobs. This setting lets the user see at a glance when the next two jobs will be run without cluttering the list of jobs. It also guards against someone accidentally deleting the recurrence by cancelling the only scheduled cost update. To verify the two jobs have been scheduled, follow these steps:

  1. Return to the xTuple Connect Console screen

  2. De-select the "Show Completed Actions" option to show all currently scheduled jobs

  3. Verify that two Update Actual Cost jobs are in the list

Keep in mind that the user who originally submitted the job will receive a confirmation email each time the job is run.

Note

You can cancel a job at any time by highlighting it and selecting the CANCEL button. If you do this to a complete set of recurring jobs, you may need to repeat the steps described in this section to schedule the recurrence to run again—if that's what you want to do.