Astera comes with a built-in scheduler that allows you to run your jobs automatically as per defined settings. There are various options to set the frequency of a schedule, such as Run Once, Hourly, Daily, Weekly, Monthly, and When file is Dropped. Once you create a job schedule, it will run according to the defined frequency and command.
Scheduled jobs run silently on the server in the background. A new tab in the Job Progress window will be added for each scheduled job that has started running. Results of the scheduled jobs are stored in the Job Log in the same way as for the regular jobs.
Optionally, you can set an email notification to signal the start and/or the completion of a scheduled job. An additional email can notify the selected recipient for any errors that occurred during the job.
To open the Job Scheduler, go to the main menu bar > Server > Job Schedules.
The Scheduler will open in a new tab.
Another way of opening the Job Scheduler is through the Server Explorer.
Go to Server Explorer > Toolbar and you will find an icon for Job Schedules.
Or, you can also right-click on the Default Server node and find Job Schedules in the context menu.
To add tasks in the Scheduler, go to the Icon Bar in the Scheduler and click on the first icon labelled, Add Scheduler Task.
Once you click on the icon to add a task, the Deployed Jobs tab will become active.
Provide a name for your job in the Name field.
In this case let’s name this job as “Sample Job”
Next, you need to select the Schedule Type for the schedule.
There are two Schedule Types:
File: This option is selected when you want to create a schedule for a dataflow, subflow or workflow.
Deployment: This option is selected when you have to deploy a project.
In this case, we will select the File type for scheduling the task.
In this File Location, provide the File Path to the file that you want to schedule.
There are some other options for Server, Dataflow and Job as well, which you can select according to your requirements.
Once the File Path has been provided, you can set the Frequency of the schedule.
There are different Frequency options to set your schedule.
Let’s discuss these one by one:
Once
Run on: This is to set the date for the one time run.
Start at: This is to set the time for the one time run.
Hourly
Scope: You can select No restriction on hours or specify the hourly window in the Run only between hours option.
Frequency Details: You can specify the minutes in the hour by selecting the Once every hour option, or select Multiple times every hour and specify the minutes interval.
Daily
Start at: You can set the exact time you want the schedule to run.
Perform this task: You can select whether you want this task to be performed everyday of the week by selecting Every Day, or select Weekdays so that the task does not run on weekends, or you may give the number of days that you want the task to run on by selecting the last option.
Start Date: You can set the exact date on which you want the schedule to run.
Weekly
Start at: You can specify the exact time when you want the schedule to start each day.
Select days of the week when the task is run: You can check the specific days of the week on which you want the schedule to run.
Monthly
Start at: You can specify the exact time when you want the schedule to start each month.
Day: You can specify the date of the month that you want the task to run. Or you can select from the generic options for one specific day of the week such as First, Second, Third, Fourth, and Last.
When File is Dropped
Dropped File Info: You can provide the directory path that the scheduler needs to check for file drop to start the job.
File Filter: You can filter out specific file formats to be picked from the specified directory.
Continuous
Scope: You can select No restriction on hours if there is no specific time frame to run the job or specify an hourly window in the Run only between hours option.
Continuous Settings: You can select options for Rerun, Erroneous Records and Job Termination to run the job continuously.
In this case we will set the Frequency of the schedule to run Monthly, every last Friday of a quarter, at 5 pm.
There are some other scheduling options in the scheduler which you can set while scheduling a job.
In this tab, you can specify parameters for the objects used inside the dataflow or workflow that you have scheduled.
Using the Notification Email tab, you can check the Enable Notification option to configure email notifications for a scheduled job.
Notify only on abnormal termination: Select when you want the email only to be sent for a failed job.
Send Notification Email: Select when your notification email should be sent When the job ends, When the job starts or Both.
Notification Email Content: Depending on the level of information you need in the notification email, you can select from two modes: Summary and Detailed.
Email Addresses: You can provide a single or multiple email addresses in the dialog box.
In this case, we will Enable Notification for a Summary When the job ends, and we will add two email addresses.
You can specify run options such as Pushdown Hints if you want to run the schedule in pushdown mode. You can also enable Optimization for dataflows.
Our schedule task has now been configured. The next step is to save the schedule for it to run on the server. To do this, click on the Save Selected Task icon in the icon bar.
You can now see your saved schedule task in the Job Schedules.
You have successfully scheduled a job in Astera.
The Job Monitor will show information regarding all the jobs to the user. Whether the jobs are in the state of,
Active
Running
Queued
Successful
Ending In Errors
Terminated By Users
The Job Monitor is responsible for storing information on all the jobs associated with the Astera server.
There are a few ways to access the Job Monitor on your version of Astera Data Stack,
The Job Monitor can be accessed through the Server Explorer. Simply,
Go to the Server Explorer panel, right-click the Default node, and select Job Monitor from the context menu.
The Job Monitor can be accessed through the main menu. Simply,
Click on the Server column on the main menu, and select Job Monitor from the drop-down options.
There are options present on the toolbar of the Job Monitor itself.
Show Latest Jobs First/Show Oldest Jobs First: This option will sort all the jobs on the monitor according to the most recent and oldest.
The left-facing arrow sorts the latest jobs towards the top, and the right-facing arrow sorts the oldest jobs towards the top.
Pause Auto-Refresh of Job Monitor: By default, this feature is selected. It will keep the Job Monitor list from automatically refreshing every time a new job is executed while the Job Monitor is open.
Unselecting this option will update the Job Monitor list during run-time as jobs are running, scheduled, executed, or failed. It will reset all the filters as well.
Show Job Trace for Selected Item: Selecting this option opens the job progress window. Inside it, we can see the jobs’ steps to end in success/error.
The job trace shows us the details of the job.
Clear Job Queue: Clear all the jobs that have been put up in a queue to run.
Delete Selected Jobs: All the highlighted jobs are going to be deleted.
Delete All Completed Jobs: All jobs which have already completed their execution will be deleted.
Jobs that are currently running will not be deleted.
Show Root Level Jobs Only: Selecting this will only display information on root-level jobs. A root-level job is one that does not have a parent assigned.
Servers: To select which server the Job Monitor will display information from.
Status: To filter out jobs based on their status, i.e., Active, Successful, Ending in Errors, etc.
Date Range: Filtering jobs based on period, i.e., Today, Yesterday, last month, etc.
Note: There is also a Custom Range option where the user can provide any custom Date Range of their choosing. It will then view only the jobs that fall in that range.
This option allows the user to extract information from the Job Monitor based on a specific search. It gives the user the ability to retrieve information on a particular search from many options.
Clicking on this will open a separate panel with additional options,
Recent Search: To navigate to a previous search that was already made.
Server: Select the server from which to pull up job information.
Additional Options
Enter the Job Name/File Name to search for it.
Select from a list of options under which to search the job, i.e., Active, Error, Success, etc., based on the status of the job.
Other options include Job Type filter, Date Range filter, and checkboxes for My Jobs Only and Root Level Jobs Only.
Once done, select Search, and it will return the desired results.
The results are then returned.
The Job Monitor context menu can be accessed by right-clicking anywhere on any job. The context menu can be opened after selecting multiple jobs too.
Rerun Selected Job: This option is to rerun any selected job.
Note: This option is not available when multiple jobs are selected.
Raise/Lower Job Priority for the Selected Job: To increase or decrease the priority for any selected job. This will place the job higher or lower on the monitor.
It is only available when the job is in a running state.
Show Child Jobs: Selecting this option will show all child jobs associated with a particular parent job.
Export To Excel: To export all the jobs in the Job Monitor to an Excel sheet at a location of your choosing.
These columns, given in the Job Monitor section itself, contain an extensive set of information regarding each job.
Job Id: Every Job has a unique Job Id to identify it.
Parent: To signify the parent node of a particular job.
Priority: The level of priority for a given job.
Job Type: To differentiate between types, i.e., Dataflow, Workflow, etc.
Server: Signifies the server on which the job was run.
Job File: The name of the job file.
Job Name: A name that was assigned to the job.
Queued: Timestamp for when a particular job was queued.
Started: Timestamp for when a particular job started
Duration: Signifies how long the job lasted.
Status: The job status, i.e., success, terminated, etc.
Scheduled Job: Displays the scheduled job ID of the scheduled job that ran.
Email Status: Displays the status of the email sent on job conditions if any.
Records Read: The number of records read per job.
Error Records: The number of errors read per job.
Warning Records: The number of warnings read per job.
User: To signify which user performed a particular job.
This concludes our discussion on the Job Monitor in Astera.
