IBM Notes 9.0.1 Social Edition Help

AUTOMATING TASKS USING SIMPLE AGENTS

Triggering an agent on a schedule
Configure an agent to run on a schedule if it is an agent that should run regularly.

Before you begin

You must create an agent before you can specify what triggers it to run. See Creating agents for more information.

About this task

You can trigger an agent on an event or on a schedule. To trigger an agent on a schedule, complete the following steps:

Procedure

1. At the Basics tab of the Agent Properties box, click On Schedule.

2. At the pull-down list next to the Schedule button, choose one of the following schedules. Note that the Web does not support scheduled invocation of agents; however, an agent on the Web can be triggered in other ways, such as through Tools/Macros or from the URL.

More Than Once a Day

Use this schedule for high-priority applications, such as those critical to a business process, and for applications that replicate several times a day, such as workflow applications that route documents for approval. Be aware that if you schedule very frequent runs (for example, every 5 minutes), the server's performance could be affected.

Daily

Use this schedule for activities that are important but that will not cause a delay if they are only generated once a day. Examples include mailing news articles or generating low-priority assignments.

Weekly

Use this schedule for routine tasks. Examples include generating summary reports and sending reminders.

Monthly

Use this schedule for low-priority maintenance tasks. Examples include archiving documents and distributing company newsletters.

Never

Use this schedule for agents that you do not want to run in particular circumstances. For example, use this run option for agents that do run on the Web or for agents that are called by other agents.

3. Once you make a choice from the pull-down menu, click the Schedule button to display the Schedule dialog box. You can add more detail on exactly when you want the agent to run. For example:

If you specified More than once a day, you can specify how often you want the agent to run on each day. You can also specify that the agent not run on weekends.
If you specified Weekly, you can specify the day of the week for the agent to run.
If you specified Monthly, you can specify a day of the month and time of the day for the agent to run.

4. At the same Schedule dialog box, you also specify the servers on which you want the agent to run. You can choose from the Run on pull-down list. Alternatively, you can have users choose the server.

Local

The agent runs only on the client. Use this option to schedule agents to run in the background on the local Notes® client. The application containing the agent must be local. The agent will run with the rights of the current Notes ID. Note that for scheduled agents to run on the local Notes client, the user must first check the

Enable scheduled local agents

box at the Basics tab of the User Preferences dialog box (

File

Preferences

User Preferences

Any server

The agent runs on any server that the agent is available on. When agents run on multiple servers and they are changing documents in applications that are replicated, you should specify the servers they run on to prevent replication conflicts. Then, set up the applications' replication schedules so they do not interfere with the agents' scheduled runs. Note that this option does not cause problems if you are using copies (instead of replicas) of the application.

Specific server

The agent runs only on the single server you select from the list of available servers.

Choose when agent is enabled

Checking this option prompts users to select a server when the agent is enabled. This option is useful for distributing agents in ready-to-use applications.

5. From the Target pull-down list, select the documents in the application the agent will run on. You have two choices:

All documents in application
All new and modified documents

These options are not supported on the Web.

Results

When you schedule an agent, remember that when agents that run on multiple servers change documents in applications that are replicated, you should specify the servers they run on to prevent replication conflicts. Then, set up the applications' replication schedules so they don't interfere with the agents' scheduled runs. Note that agents are scheduled according to the interval you set up, not the exact time of day. For example, if you schedule an agent to run hourly, it runs about one hour after the last time it ran.

Parent topic: Advanced agents topics

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