Running Ad-Hoc Jobs and Monitoring

You now have your first job ready to run. To try it out be sure to add some files to the folder you specified when you created job step 1 in the above exercise. Make sure some are files older than your age setting (older than 90 days if you followed the example exactly). And be sure to include files that are newer. But once you have done that, you do not want to wait until late at night to see what happens when the job is executed. We will see how you do that in just a moment. First, you want to locate the Monitor button on the toolbar of the Manager application and click it. This opens the monitor which shows you what jobs are queued and executing on JobServer.NET right now.

Now this next part will happen quickly, so you want to pay close attention to the monitor after this next step. You can start your job at any time (ad-hoc) and as soon as it starts, it will show up in the monitor and you will briefly be able to see it run and finish. When you are ready to start your job, you want to right-click on your job name in the navigation panel and from the pop-up menu, pick the Start option. Your job will run right away when you click the start option.

Some job definitions, such as the one highlighted in these example screenshots, execute their job steps very quickly and you will have to watch carefully to see them display a running status. Most job definitions perform quite a bit more work and it would be easy to catch them in the running status.

After the job has finished running you will see it continues to display in the monitor for a few seconds afterwards. This is so you have a chance to view the very recently completed jobs in the monitor. Now review the files in your folder and you should be able to confirm that any files you placed there over the specified age have been successfully deleted.