Scheduler Setup

Opening the Scheduler Application

As soon as you launch Hubble, you are presented with the login dialog. Click the clock icon to launch Scheduler, which has the same look and feel as the Administrator Application. When launched for the first time, you will be prompted to choose the repository selection file or create a new one. Navigate to select the repository selection file located in the install path for the version of Hubble being used.

Once launched, log into the Object Repository as either an administrator or a user with a Scheduler (SCH) license:

If you log in as a non-Administrator, you will only see the email servers and scheduled tasks.

Configuring the SMTP Settings

To configure the SMTP settings in order to be able to allow the sending of emails through the application, right-click on Email Servers and choose SMTP Configuration:

Within the SMTP Server Setup dialog, complete the following information that is specific to your SMTP Server:

Server Address - network name or IP address of the SMTP server.
User Name - if required by the SMTP server, this is the email address of the Scheduler Administrator User (the same user who logged into Scheduler).
Password - if required by the SMTP server, this is the Scheduler Administrator User’s email password.
Port Number - SMTP server Port Number.
SSL - check if applicable (has to do with encryption).

From Email - the From Address that will be used on automated emails sent to recipient (this needs to match the user name).

Test Settings – sends a test email to the user setting up the task in Scheduler. (It is important to note that Scheduler is using the information of the user who logged into the application, so it is essential that this person has a valid email address defined in his/her User Definition.)

Once configured, you will see the SMTP Settings on the right panel when the Email Servers folder on the left is highlighted:

The SMTP settings must be set up prior to starting Scheduler in Windows Services.

Windows Services

Starting Scheduler in Windows Services

After you have configured the SMTP Settings and before any scheduled tasks can be run in Scheduler, you must manually start Scheduler in Windows Services if the system is not restarted. You must be an administrator to start the service. It is also important to note that if users want to save the output of scheduled reports to a shared drive, the user who is starting the Scheduler service (this is the “Log on as user”) must have write permissions to that network path.

The below steps are only required when the service is first installed and the PC or server (wherever Scheduler is installed) has not been restarted. On subsequent restarts, as the Startup Type is set to automatic, the service will start once the Operating System is ready for user login.

To manually start Scheduler in Windows Services, follow the below steps:

Launch Windows Services (in Windows 7 or Windows 10) by typing ‘Services’ into the Windows Start Menu Search.
Highlight Hubble Scheduler.
Click Start the service at the left side of the screen:

Once complete, click Close.

Disabling Scheduler in Windows Services

When Scheduler has been installed on both a server and a client PC, you must permanently disable the service on the PC. This is because only one Scheduler Service should be active (started) per Object Repository.

To deactivate the Scheduler Service on the local PC, follow these steps.

Go to Windows Services, right-click on Hubble Scheduler, and select Properties.

Change the Startup Type to Disabled:

Scheduled Tasks

Create a Scheduled Task

Right-click on Scheduled Tasks, select New, and then choose Scheduled Inquiry Task:

Within the Inquiry Settings tab, set the following:

Name: name of task (not necessarily the inquiry name).
Inquiry/Report Pack: navigate to find the inquiry or report pack.
Profile: profile used to run the inquiry.
Output Format: PDF/Excel/PDF and Excel/Hubble Decision Point

Target Options: Send by Email/Save to Folder/both.
Folder Path: if saving to a folder, this is the path to that folder.
File Name Pattern: if saving to a folder, here you can set a dynamic file name.

Within the Run As tab, set the following:

Run As User: inquiry will be run using this user’s login information; therefore the ERP security for this user will be honored.
Run As Role/Responsibility: depending on the underlying ERP system, define the user’s role (JDE) or responsibility (EBS) being used to run the inquiry.

Distribute To: choose a user or group of users to whom the email notification will be sent.

Scheduler runs the inquiry once for each combination of ‘Run As User’ and ‘Run As Role’, honoring the ERP security for the two together.

Within the Schedule Tab, set the following:

Run Time (uses Regional Settings to determine MM/DD/YYYY format)
Priority: task priority
Recurrence: recurrence information

End Date: task end date

The date and time should be defined in the local time zone – no adjustment should be made to shift the time to the time of the server where Scheduler is started in Windows Services. The stored date and time will make the adjustment to store the time in universal time and the service will make an adjustment to the server time, if required.

Because all dates and times are stored in Universal Time, not the user’s time zone, the product cannot change the time of the scheduled tasks when a time change occurs due to Daylight Saving Time/Summer Time. You will need to change the time of your reports twice a year, when the time changes, if you need them to run at the same time year-round. This is not necessary from Release 22.3 onwards.

If there are 2 scheduled jobs at once, the one with the higher priority takes precedence. If there are 2 jobs scheduled at the same time with the same priority, there is no rule as to which runs first.

Within the Email Notification tab, set the following:

Reply To – the email address (does not have to belong to a Hubble user) used when an email recipient replies to the email notification. If this field is left blank, the ‘From Email’ address in the SMTP configuration will be used for email replies
Subject – subject of the email notification.
Body – body of the email; can use tags to use dynamic information.

Tags – dynamic information that you can insert into the body of the email. Note that on tags, the run date/run time comes from the server that the Service is installed on. It will be different than the date/time defined in the Schedule tab if the server is in a different time zone than that of the local machine.

DecisionPoint Integration

Reports can be exported to a DecisionPoint format. When creating a new Scheduled Inquiry Task, choose the Hubble DecisionPoint Output Format. DecisionPoint files can only be outputted via the Save To Folder Target Option.

Choose the shared folder that the DecisionPoint Server will read Hubble imports from. In this example N:\DecisionPoint\Hubble\Imports has been chosen:

Continue creating the task as normal (see above), then click OK.

After the task has been executed, check the output folder that you specified - there should be a .dph file in that folder corresponding to the report you just exported. This file can be read and imported into DecisionPoint Server.

Managing Scheduled Tasks

Scheduled tasks can be edited, deleted, renamed, disabled and enabled. To do any of these functions, highlight Scheduled Tasks in the left panel of Scheduler. Right-click on the specific task in the right panel and select the desired function.

You can use multi-select on your keyboard (Ctrl and Shift keys) to highlight multiple scheduled tasks in the right panel. This can especially be useful if you want to disable or enable multiple scheduled tasks at the same time.

To export the entire list of scheduled tasks:

Right-click in the white area of the right panel and select Save List.

You will then be prompted to save the list as a .csv file.

View Logging Information

The logging history in Administrator and Scheduler displays the information about any reports that have been generated using Scheduler.

From Administrator, to view the logged history, right-click on Logging and select View History.

From Scheduler, to view the logged history, right-click on the Scheduled Task and select View History.

If you do not have the View History option available to select you can grant permissions to View History for the Scheduler User within Administrator. Once logged into the repository using Administrator, you can navigate to the Scheduler User located under User and Groups and right-click on their username and select Capabilities. Click the Advanced button and under the Administration tree node expand Repository Management. You will see an advanced capability for View History. Highlight View History capability and on the right side highlight the Scheduler User and select the Enable = Yes radio button.

Once the Scheduler user logs back into Scheduler they will be able to View History for their Scheduled Task.

Once View History is selected, set filter data as needed. Within the Scheduler Application, only Scheduler-specific messages are displayed. However within Administrator, to narrow down to Scheduler events, you need to change Categories to only select Scheduler as shown below.

After running the query, you will see the Scheduler Events. In the screenshot below, you can see the event according to its corresponding message: Windows Services started, scheduled inquiry task put in the execution queue and later started, data source switched, task run, task finished and email output.

If any errors occurred, such as an invalid email address being set up for a Recipient User, you would see the error in this log:

To see the number of rows generated in the report, you must include the Inquiry Operations category, located under Application:

Missed Tasks

If the Scheduler Service or the repository database server is ever down or offline (e.g. down for maintenance or a backup is being done), once it is back up Scheduler looks for any missed tasks. It will then run those tasks if they were missed. If a task was scheduled to run multiple times while the service or server was down, it will only run one time once the service/server is back up.

By default, Scheduler will look back 1 day for missed tasks. This is a configurable option, set in the SchedulerService.exe.config file that is installed in the same directory as Scheduler.

There is a section in the file which is initially:

</setting>

The value is in the format "days.hours:minutes:seconds".

If you were to set this to 0.00:00:00, it means that the service does not look back for any missed tasks.

The SCHEDULERSERVICE.EXE.CONFIG file can be changed using whatever application the System Administrator prefers, however Notepad is suggested.

Windows Event Viewer

To view Windows Events such as scheduled tasks being run or any errors that have occurred, follow the below steps.

Launch Windows Event Viewer (in Windows 7 or Windows 10) by typing ‘Event Viewer’ into the Windows Start Menu Search.
Expand Windows Logs and then Application:

Uninstall Scheduler

Uninstall Scheduler using Add/Remove Programs on Windows. It is important to note that you cannot install a higher version of Scheduler on top of an existing Scheduler installation. You must first remove the previous service using Add/Remove Programs and can then install the new version.