Introduction

• The Cycle Instruction allows to repeat all jobs or a number of jobs in a workflow.
• The instruction can be used
  • to spawn the complete workflow,
  • to spawn a a number of jobs in a workflow,
  • in a sequential way by using a number of Cycle Instructions,
  • in a nested way by embedding Cycle Instructions.
• The Cycle Instruction offers some versatile options when to repeat execution and how often this should happen.
• Consider that a Cycle Instruction spawning a complete workflow is an alternative to using JS7 - Schedules for cyclic orders.
  • The difference being that Schedules create cyclic orders whereas the Cycle Instruction creates cyclic workflows.
  • For each cyclic order a separate log entry is created while cyclic workflows report to the same log.
  • Processing of cyclic workflows is by far more efficient than use of cyclic workflows.

Basic Use of the Cycle Instruction

The Cycle Instruction allows to specify any number of cycles that define different rule sets when to repeat job nodes.

Each cycle allows to use one the following cycle types:

• periodical execution: allows to specify periodic points in time, as e.g. for the 10th, 15th, 40th minute of each hour.
• continuous execution: allows to specify a fixed interval for a pause between cyclic executions.
• ticking execution: allows to specify a fixed interval between each start of a cycle.

In addition for any cycles included with a Cycle Instruction the rule set specifies

• the begin of first cycle considering the workflow's time zone
• the maximum duration for which cycles are repeated, for example 8 hours.

Periodical Execution

This cycle type allows to specify both

• the period by which the cycle repeats: this could be for example 1 hour, 4 hours, 1 day etc.
• the point in time within the repeat period when cycles start.

Download Workflow Example: pdwCyclicSimpleWorkflowPeriodical.json

Explanation:

• The property editor displays the summary information of the period.
• The period is configured
  • by use of a frequency, for example every day
  • by period details specifying the begin and duration of the period
  • by repeat details specifying for example
    • the repeat period of 1 hour
    • the minutes for which the cycle is started for each repeat period

When creating/modifying a periodical cycle then this can look like this:

Explanation:

• The cycle is of periodical type, i.e. the cycle repeats within the given period at fixed points in time.
• The period duration is 1h. 
• The offsets when to start the cycle within the given period are specified by minutes: at each full hour, at each 15th, 30th and 45th minute of each hour
• The first cycle is specified to start at midnight, i.e. begin of day, in the workflow's time zone, with the last cycle being started 23 hours later.

Continuous Execution

Download Workflow Example: pdwCyclicSimpleWorkflowContinuous.json

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