Overview
You can run a task plan:
- manually, using the property tab toolbar button
Start. - automatically at a scheduled date and time, using the Scheduled check box and related Schedule section.
- by linking it to an application action, in the action properties → Run Task Plan section; see Table-Action.
When the user clicks something in the application, such as a button or a data row, the task plan runs.
When a task plan runs, its tasks are run in the order they are listed.
You can optionally set up a list of users who will receive an email about the outcome of running the task plan.
Types of Task
Analysis Tasks
Analysis tasks run analysis on a number of streams.
Archive Tasks
An Archive Task can be created to archive data no longer needed in PhixFlow for processing. When a Stream is archived, PhixFlow creates an Archive Log with useful details of the data archived. Optionally, the archived data can be saved to a file. If this is done, the data can reloaded into PhixFlow using Restore Archive.
If you set up an archive task with no stream added, all streams configured for archive will be archived by this task, unless this stream has been added to another archive task. Even if you set up a catch-all archive task in this way, you might still want to have separate archiving for certain streams if they contain large amounts of data for each run, in which case archiving can sometimes task a while - this means you can schedule archiving for these streams in particular at a time when you system is quiet.
Rollback Tasks
A Rollback Task can be created to roll-back one or more streams. On execution, it fully rolls back all data in the stream, deleting the stream-sets.
System Tasks
A System Task performs system-wide housekeeping activities. These include deleting:
- and optionally archiving log messages
- managed file entries
- email entries
- temporary files created by file exporters to send by email
- data from incomplete stream sets.
The System Task should be run daily, or at a minimum every week. If incomplete stream sets are not deleted, they can slow down PhixFlow's performance. Depending on your PhixFlow database, queries that have to exempt many incomplete stream sets can reach system limits. This can prevent PhixFlow and its applications from running.
The archiving periods, and whether to archive log messages before they are deleted, are controlled by the following parameters in System Configuration:
- Delete Log Messages After Days
- Archive Deleted Log Messages To File
- Delete Statistics After Days
- Delete Emails After Days
Task Properties
For information about the properties toolbar, and about the sections Parent Details, Analysis Models, Description and Audit Summary, see Common Properties. We recommend you always add a Description that explains the purpose of the item you are creating.
For a full list of all the PhixFlow property tabs and windows, see Properties, Windows, Menus and Toolbars.
Basic Settings
| Field | Description |
|---|---|
| Name | The name of the task. |
| Mandatory | If ticked, when the task plan to which this task is attached, is run this task must succeed before the Analysis Engine will continue with the next task in the task plan. |
| Order | The order that the task will be run in the task plan. |
| Task Type | One of:
|
Streams
A list of streams assigned to the task. This section only appears for analysis tasks and archive tasks.
Press the 
button to bring up the list of streams - drag streams into this list so that they will be run (for analysis tasks) or archived (for archive tasks). Remember that for archive tasks, if no streams are added, all streams that have archiving configured will be archived, unless they have been added to another archive task.