14 Creating Tasks and Task Plans

By the end of this chapter you will be able to:

  • Set up tasks and task plans
  • Schedule task plans

Task plans allow you to set up collections of components to run at the same time. You can also schedule when analysis will run on these models. In this exercise you will set up a simple task plan to run your Introduction to Modelling analysis model, and schedule it.

Creating Tasks and Task Plans

  1. In your application's Repository, find  Task Plan.
  2. Select  Create New. PhixFlow opens a new task plan settings.
  3. In Basic Settings, set:
    • Name: Run Customer Details Model
    • Enabled
    • In the toolbar, click  Apply.
  4. In the Tasks section, hover over  and from the drop-down menu, select Analysis Task. PhixFlow opens a New Analysis Task tab on the left of the task plan settings tab. 
    1. In the Basic Settings section, set:
      • Name: Run Customer Summary by Region
      • Click  Apply.
    2. In the Tables section, click  List Tables to list the tables.
      • On the right, PhixFlow displays the list of tables in the Repository.
      • Find the table Customer Summary by Region and drag it into the Tables section.
    3. Click  Apply and Close to save and close the analysis task details settings.
  5. Back in the task plan settings, in the Send By Email section, set:
    • Email from: training@PhixFlow.com
      • This is the email account used to send emails from PhixFlow, see Email Account.
    • Subject Expression:

      "Result of Run Customer Details Model at " + now()
      
    • Message Expression:

      "Result of Run Customer Details Model at " + now() + ": Messages: " + 
      _messages + "; Warnings: " + _warnings + "; Errors: " + _errors
    • Notification: click .
  6. In the New Notification Rule tab, select  Apply.
    1. In the Users section, select  Users and drag the user Train (the user you are currently logged in as) into the list of Users.
  7. In the settings toolbar, click  Apply and Close.
  8. Right-click on your task plan in the Repository and select  Start. PhixFlow runs the task plan and sends an email to the selected user.
  9. You will receive another email from the export of the customer summary, and an email with the status of the task plan run.

Scheduling Task Plans

  1. Double-click your new task plan Run Customer Details Model in the Repository to open its settings.
  2. In the Basic Settings section, set:
    1. Scheduled:
  3. PhixFlow displays a Schedule section:
    1. We want to run the task plan 2 or 3 minutes from now. 

      For day, month and year fields you will use wildcard characters: * for all values and ? to indicate no value is set. For more help, see Task Plans.
      Enter:

      1. Seconds: 0
      2. Minutes: mm
           where mm is 2 or 3 minutes from now. For example, if the time is now 11:41 am, enter 43.
      3. Hourshh
        1. where hh is the current hour. For example, if the time is now 11:41 am, enter 11.
      4. Day of Month: *
        1.  * indicates everyday
      5. Month: *
      6. Day of Week: ?
        1. ? indicates no value, as we have specified everyday above.
      7. Year: *
  4. Click  Apply and Close.
  5. Wait for your task plan to start under its schedule.