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Design
Design your policies using the Policy Designer on your own PC, in local source files. Only “enable” them for running (from the Policy Manager) when you are ready – the design is then frozen in the operational environment until re-enabled. Group and link activities hierarchically – easier to understand each level of complexity. Define completion/status codes (and groups of codes) for each activity and assign a success, failure or warning flag to them. Define completion codes for groups of activities, depending on the completion of the constituent activities. Define the success or failure of a policy according to the completion of its constituent activities. Run multiple activities concurrently, or consecutively based on their completion codes. Perform specified actions after completion of an activity with selected completion codes; e.g.
Re-use linked groups of activities (with their associated action) in different contexts (e.g. backup sequence to be executed on multiple computers: stop one or more applications, do the backup, restart the applications). Include values such as date, time, computer name, user-specified values, etc. in command lines, file names, etc. A number of sample policies are supplied for demonstrating the capabilities of ActivitySCHEDULER and some of its features. These can be edited as a starting point for your own policies.
Dependencies and pre-requisites
Only run an activity or group of activities if certain dependencies are met, e.g. presence or absence of a file or folder, minimum or maximum disk space on specified drive, time of day, etc. Optionally wait a specified time for a dependency to be met, and perform specified actions if the required dependencies are not met. Perform specified actions before starting an activity or group of activities; e.g. copy or delete a file (from the same or a different computer). Define virtual concurrent resources to limit the number of certain types of activity that can run concurrently on each machine; e.g. only run one Crystal report at a time (or only one for each database), or only run two tape backups at a time (if you only have 2 tape drives).
Notification
Send notifications from within your policy when specified conditions occur (e.g. on error or when successful), by:
Timing controls
Schedule policies to run at a specified time of day:
A policy can be run on an ad-hoc basis (without a timed schedule), as a quick, easy and reliable way of performing a linked set of tasks. Set a timeout for each activity and/or group of activities, by elapsed time or time of day (e.g. abort an application if it takes more than 1 hour, or abort a resource-intensive house-keeping task if still running when everyone starts work in the morning). Security
Run each activity in a specified user context (or LocalSystem) on a specified computer, to maintain security. Restrict the permissions of interactive users for designing policies which run in someone else’s user-context or on other computers. Only allow certain users to “enable” (and subsequently own) a policy for running/scheduling. Restrict user permissions for managing policies in the Policy Manager by policy owner or type. Define user groups to facilitate the setting of multiple permissions. Clone an existing user to easily configure an additional user with similar properties. Maintain each user’s password in the database, encrypted using an implementation of DES written by Eric Young (eay@mincom.oz.au). This is used both for logging on to the Policy Designer and Policy Manager, and for running activities in that user-context. User accounts can be configured with an alias (different username and password) for executing activities on a different computer. Configure which computers are allowed to have activities executed on them, the Policy Designer or Policy Manager used on them, and notification messages sent to them. Management
Manage your operational policies remotely within your network using the Policy Manager, or from anywhere using the web version. The Policy Manager shows each enabled policy with information such as its owner (the user who enabled it), last completion status, next scheduled run time, scheduled frequency, when last enabled, etc. See at a glance which policies are currently running, and check their progress (which activities have completed and are currently in progress, etc.) Manually abort an over-running policy if required. For each policy, view a history of each run with start and end times, duration, completion status, next scheduled start time or user who started it manually, etc. A report is automatically produced for each execution of a policy, showing the activities executed in configurable level of detail (e.g. start and end times, parameter values), and optionally including additional messages that you can build into the policy definition at certain points. Policies are supplied for performing housekeeping tasks on server log files. Automated reporting
Easily schedule Crystal reports using the Report Wizard (see ReportSCHEDULER if you only want to schedule reports). Generate Crystal reports in various formats (pdf, xls, doc, txt, csv, etc.). Email, print, and save generated reports to file. A selection of Crystal reports supplied for the ActivitySCHEDULER database itself. Crystal Reports 10 run-time supplied. If you have the full Crystal Reports, the supplied installation configures it for use with ActivitySCHEDULER. Or simply install the supplied run-time on your central server and copy your report definitions there for automating.Automate reports defined with Crystal 8.5, 9, 10, 11, etc. as long as compatible with Crystal 10.
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