JobScheduler - Tutorial 4 - Editing and Running a JITL Job

Introduction

This tutorial will show how to take two of the JobScheduler's JITL (JobScheduler Template Library) Jobs and configure them for your environment.

The JITL Jobs are intended to be easy to configure and help users get started with the most common job scheduling tasks.

Note that the other tutorials in this series are:

• JobScheduler - Tutorials - Introduction and Requirements
• JobScheduler - Tutorial 1 - Running a simple job using JOC
• JobScheduler - Tutorial 2 - Editing a Simple Job with JOE
• JobScheduler - Tutorial 3 - Running an Order Using the Run Time Parameter
• JobScheduler - Tutorial 4 - Editing and Running a JITL Job (this tutorial)

About JITL jobs

The JITL jobs that are most likely to be of immediate use are pre-installed in the JobScheduler's live/sos folder. They are grouped together in a number of sub-folders and can be most easily seen in the JOC Jobs tab as shown in the screen-shot below:

Please note:

• The exact list of jobs that you will see here will depend on the packages that you selected during installation of your JobScheduler:
  • dailyschedule - is always installed
  • events - is only installed if the "Configure JobScheduler as event handler" option was selected during installation
  • housekeeping - is only installed if the Housekeeping Jobs package was selected 
  • jitl - is always installed
  • notification - is always installed
  • update - is installed if the Update Service package was selected
• Some of the jobs come with orders as can be seen from the green-colored text in the above screen-shot:
  • Some of these orders are active - a Next start time is listed - for example, the orders for the dailyschedule jobs
  • Other orders - such as those for the notifications jobs - have the state pending - i.e they will only run when required and are listed with "never" as their Next start time.

Further JITL Jobs

• Comparing the list of jobs shown above with the full list of JITL jobs will quickly show that a large proportion of the JITL jobs are not shown in the above screenshot.
  This is because the remaining JITL jobs are available by way of a wizard that is integrated in JOE and that will be fully described in a later tutorial.

About This Tutorial

The JITL jobs that are probably most important for users considering regular use of their JobScheduler are:

• the scheduler_rotate_log job that rotates and compresses the JobScheuler's log files and
• the scheduler_cleanup_files job that removes temporary files e.g. for output to stdout or stderr.

These jobs prevent an accumulation of temporary files or over-large log files from slowing down JobScheduler and possibly its host computer.

Both these jobs are part of the JobScheduler's Housekeeping Package and because of their practical use their configuration and scheduling is the subject of this tutorial.
Note that we recommend that you configure these jobs to run on any computer which you may use to run JobScheduler regularly and to schedule them to run automatically.

Configuring the scheduler_rotate_log Job in JOE

1. Follow the procedures already described in these tutorials to start JOE and open the .\live\sos\housekeeping folder, which contains the scheduler_rotate_log job.
2. Open the Jobs element in the Scheduler Elements pane by clicking on the triangle to the left of the element and repeat the procedure to open the scheduler_rotate_log element.
3. Select the Parameter element, which will open the Parameter form at the Parameter tab as shown in the screen-shot below:
   
4. Click on the Wizard button at the right as shown in the screen-shot above.
   This will open the wizard mentioned in the introduction to this tutorial.
   The wizard is not opened at the start, as the scheduler_rotate_log job has already been configured. Instead it opens at Step 3, which provides a form listing all the parameters that can be set for this job.
   This form is shown in the next screen-shot.
   
5. To demonstrate the configuration of this job within the scope of this tutorial, we recommend that you only change the file_age parameter, which is highlighted in the above screen-shot, from its default value - as long as the default paths have been used when installing your JobScheduler. If you have custom installation paths you may also need to modify the file_path parameter.
   The procedure to modify and or set the value of a parameter in this wizard is always the same:
   1. Parameters that will be used with their default values are listed in the left hand pane of the wizard.
      Parameters that are used with a custom value are listed in the right hand pane.
      To set a custom value for the file_age parameter, select the parameter/value pair in the left hand pane, as shown in the screen-shot and click on the " > " Button in the middle of the wizard.