Admin - Schedule

The Scheduled Actions screen will present the user with a list of items that are scheduled to run at various times.  

This screen is split into two sections

 

Note: Alerts are disabled by default. The Unanet Administrator controls if / when project performance alerts are generated via the Admin >> Schedule screen.  By default, project alerts are not scheduled to be generated (that is, your administrator will need to enable them, defining when and at what frequency they will be evaluated).

From this screen you can see what items are currently scheduled, when they last ran, when they will run next, for what date range they are in affect, and you can also further edit them or delete (or disable) them.

Note that the schedule utility can be disabled upon system startup via the unanet.scheduler.disabled property.  This may be useful, for example, if you are running a testing environment that is a clone of your production and you do not wish to send out reminders, etc.

Topics covered on this help page include:

 


Example Schedule screen:

Field Descriptions (click on a link below for additional information):

 

 


Scheduling Reminders

For more information about editing and scheduling the entries in the Reminders section, see Admin Reminders.

 


System Actions

 

Scheduling Automated Accrual Post

Clicking on the Automated Accrual Post edit pencil will allow the administrator to specify when the accrual post process will be triggered.  It is strongly recommended to schedule this activity during periods of low system usage.  In most cases, if you are using this feature, you would schedule the job to run every night, where it will check to see if any accrual plans need to be posted.  Most nights, it would not find any that meet the criteria and quietly do nothing.  For more information about the Automated Accrual Posting process and when an accrual plan would meet the criteria to be automatically posted, see Admin >> Accruals (in particular, check out the example).

For more information about setting up Accrual Plans to participate in the Automated Posting, see Admin >> Setup >> Accrual Plans.

By default, the automated accrual post is not scheduled and thus this tab will have no scheduling detail fields available and None will be selected.  You have several options for scheduling, including Daily, Weekly, Monthly and Advanced.

 

Scheduling Project and Purchase Order Alerts

Clicking on the Project Alerts or Purchase Order Alerts edit pencil will allow the administrator to specify when the project or purchasing alerts will be generated.  It is strongly recommended to schedule this activity to run during off hours as the this process may evaluate many projects or Purchase Orders ( POs) and generate many alert notifications (based on the number of users interested in being alerted, number of projects or POs, etc.).   

For more information about how project managers request alert notification for their projects, see Project Alerts. For more information about PO Alerts, see Purchasing Alerts.

By default, the project and PO alerts are not scheduled and thus this tab will have no scheduling detail fields available and None will be selected.  You have several options for scheduling, including Daily, Weekly, Monthly and Advanced.

 

Scheduling Automated Customer Payment Past Due Reminders

Clicking on the Automated Customer Payment Past Due Reminders edit pencil will allow the administrator to specify when the invoice past due reminders will be sent out. See Project Billing >> Invoice - Contacts or List Invoices >> Invoice Setup for more information about the Reminder Email Message and Reminder Frequency preferences. Note that the reminder template and frequency for an invoice is determined by consulting the invoice settings. Invoice settings can be supplied directly for an individual invoice, or inherited from the project settings or system level settings, in that order.   

Included customer invoices will have the following characteristics:

 

A reminder email is sent to the recipient containing:

 

 

Scheduling Screen

The examples below show the various options available with each scheduling interval.  These screens will be used to schedule the Automated Accrual Post, Project Alert, and PO Alert jobs.  It would be advisable to schedule these jobs during low periods of system usage to not conflict with one another or other activity on your servers (such as nightly backups).

 

Examples of the various scheduling screens follow:

Daily

Weekly

Monthly

Advanced

If you are familiar with UNIX-style crontab files, then you will be right at home with the Advanced Schedule Type—although there are some critical differences.

 

 

Allowed

Field

Values

Special Characters

Minute

0 - 59

, - * /

Hour

0 - 23

, - * /

Day of Month

1 - 31

, - * / L W ?  (no ranges or lists with L or W)

Month

1 - 12

, - * /

Day of Week

1 - 7

, - * / L #?

 

 

Here are some examples (unspecified field values are blank):

Field Values

Meaning

Minute: 0
Hour: 12

Fire at 12 PM (noon) every day

Minute: *
Hour: 14

Fire every minute starting at 2 PM and ending at 2:59 PM, every day

Minute: */5
Hour: 14

Fire every 5 minutes starting at 2 PM and ending at 2:55 PM, every day

Minute: 10,44
Hour: 14
Month: 3
Day Of Week: 4

Fire at 2:10 PM and 2:44 PM, every Wednesday in March

Minute: 15
Hour: 10
Day Of Week: 2-6

Fire at 10:15 AM, every Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday

Minute: 15
Hour: 10
Day Of Month: 15

Fire at 10:15 AM, on the 15th of every month

Minute: 15
Hour: 10
Day Of Month: L

Fire at 10:15 AM, on the last day of every month

Minute: 15
Hour: 10
Day Of Week: 6L

Fire at 10:15 AM, on the last Friday of every month

Minute: 15
Hour: 10
Month: 3,6,9,12
Day Of Week: 6L

Fire at 10:15 AM, on the last Friday of March, June, September, and December

Minute: 15
Hour: 10
Day Of Week: 6#3

Fire at 10:15 AM, on the third Friday of every month

 

To accommodate a Semi-Monthly:

 

 

 

Multi-Front End Server Note:  If you are running multiple front end web servers and using the scheduling feature, you will need to make sure that the times are synchronized between the two servers to within about one second or events may be triggered multiple times, or not at all, or the database scheduling tables may be corrupted.

Related Topics