Triggering an agent on a schedule

About this task

Once you have created an agent, you must choose whether to trigger the agent on an event or on a schedule. To trigger an agent on a schedule:

Procedure

  1. On the Basics tab of the Agent Properties box, click "On Schedule."
  2. In the list next to the Schedule button, choose one of the schedules listed in the following table.

    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.

    Schedule for agent

    Use for

    More Than Once a Day

    High-priority databases, such as those critical to a business process and for databases 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 adversely affected.

    Daily

    Activities that are important but that will not cause a delay if they are only generated once a day. Examples include mailing news wire articles or generating low-priority assignments.

    Weekly

    Routine tasks, such as generating summary reports and sending reminders.

    Monthly

    Low-priority maintenance tasks, such as archiving documents and distributing company newsletters.

    Never

    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 list, click the Schedule button to display the Schedule dialog box. You can add more details about running the agent. 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 and time of day 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. From the Target pull-down list, select the documents in the database the agent will run on. You have two choices:
    • All documents in database
    • All new and modified documents

    These options are not supported on the Web.

Results

If you paste, modify, or enable a scheduled agent, the agent will run immediately if it has missed running on the day of the changes.

Note: 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.

Agents that miss their scheduled run

About this task

If a scheduled agent is edited (for example, enabled, modified, saved, or pasted), it will usually run immediately if it has missed its scheduled run. This is true for agents scheduled monthly and weekly. It is partially true for agents scheduled daily.

If a agent scheduled to run daily misses its scheduled run because it was disabled, it will run if it is enabled within half an hour of the scheduled run. However, If a scheduled agent is saved, pasted, or modified, it will run immediately if it has missed its schedule.