How to schedule an action

1. Verify that the service is started. If not, you must install and start it.

   You can define your actions even if the service is not installed, but they will not be executed until the service is started.

2. Choose the object (eventlog, source or category) you want to be the object of the action then open the schedule window:
   • With the Action menu
   • With the toolbar:
   • With the context menu that you obtain with the right button of the mouse when selecting an eventlog, a source or a category.

With the name control, you can load an existing action, or create a new one. If you choose an existing one, its characteristics are loaded. By changing the name of this action, you create a new one with the same characteristics when you click on the Add/Modify button.

Some particular fields

Period

To define when the action will be executed, you must first choose the periodicity:

• Once: choose the day of the week, (nothing for today), and the hour
• Periodically: choose the period, meaning the time between two actions.
• Daily: choose the hour
• Weekly: choose the day of the week and the hour. You can choose several days.
• Monthly: choose the day of the month and the hour.

Type of action

And then you choose an action:

• You can only choose the save and/or erase or the dump and erase for the eventlog tasks, not for a source or category actions.
• If you save your log, you must specify the name and path of the file (don't forget that the save or dump is done only if the file specified doesn't exist).
• If you define a dump, you must click on the property button to set the characteristics of the dump. See How to dump for more explanations.

File name

When you specify the name of the file, you can use

• %computer% to insert the name of the computer
• %date% or %date(format)% to insert the date of the action in the name of the file.
  The format of the date is either the one that is defined in the options, or the one that you define between the brackets with the advanced date format.

If you schedule an action for a remote computer, the path of the file is referenced for th remote computer, in other words if you specified from computer A to save the eventlog of computer B in c:/save/appli.evt, the file appli.evt will be saved on computer B if the c:/save directory exists.

Post command

The post command will be run after the execution of the action, for example send a mail thanks to the blat utility.

You can use:

• %computer% to insert the name of the computer,
• %date% the date of the action,
• %file% the name of the file,
• %action% the name of the action and
• %result% the result of the action.

Action name

The name of the action is referenced for an object (log, source or category), so you can have the same name for different objects.

Save and load an action

You can save the action data in a file (suffix .act) with the command Save of the File menu for later loading in an other object (command Load of the File menu).

If you use the command Load action of the context menu for a server object or drag and drop an .act file, the action is loaded for the same object (log, source or category) as the original, whereas if you use load it in the schedule window, the data are loaded for the current object.

You can also view the definition of the action as well as load or print it thanks to the context menu of an .act file in the Windows explorer.

Execution immediately

To test your actions, you could send the order to the service to execute it immediately thanks to the command Execute now of the action menu. If the service is not started, the order is not saved and you must launch it again after starting the service.

List of the actions

You can get the list of actions by clicking on the button on the toolbar to have the actions that remain to execute today or the button to have all the actions.

• The icon tells you if the last action is successful or not. For more details, you can look at the application log or open the schedule window command Last execution of the action menu and you obtain:
  • Date of the last execution. (with the service or with execute now)
  • Status of the action: OK if it is correct, otherwise the reason of the failure.
  • Name of the generated file.
• The * in the seventh column means that the task will be executed today.
• The periods are: O for once, P for periodic, D for daily, W for Weekly and M for Monthly.
• The days are: Mon, Tue, Wed, Thu, Fri, Sat and Sun.
• The actions are: D for dump, D/E for dump and erase, S for save, E for Erase and S/E for save and erase.

You can modify an action by clicking on the first column. You open the schedule window.

The status of the action is updated each 10 s., which explains why a selected action sometimes can loose the focus

An action is executed if the actual day corresponding to the day of the task, and if the time of the task is passed over. Correspondingly, if the is started, all the actions overdue are executed immediately.

You can see the date of the last execution in this window or check the execution of the task in the application eventlog.

You can sort the column by clicking the header of the column. The order is logical, which means:

• For the hour column: time order.
• For the periodicity column: the order is Once, Periodically, Daily, Weekly and Monthly.
• For the day column: there is a periodicity sort and then a date sort (with Monday the first day of the week).
• For the action column: the sort is save, erase save/erase, dump and dump/erase.
• For the Last execution column: date order.
• For the other column: alphabetic order.