Agents rules – Completing the Schedule tab

Description

Identifies the name of the agent. Select a name that is unique within the list of agents in this agents rule. The same name is typically used for both the agent and the agent activity.

Specify the schedule type for the agent activity:

• Periodic — The agent runs the activity and then sleeps for the number of seconds entered in the Interval column.
• Recurring — The agent runs the activity based on a specified calendar schedule (for example, every Monday at 5:00 P.M.).
• Startup — The agent runs the activity once at startup based on a specified parameter.

Note: The value that you enter in this section can be overridden in the generated agent schedule instances.

If the Pattern field is set to Periodic, enter the amount of time in seconds that the agent waits before starting (or restarting) this activity after the queue is empty. This value must be at least five seconds.

If the Pattern field is set to Recurring, click Advanced to examine or modify the schedule in the Recurrence dialog box.

Note: You can override the values entered in the Recurrence dialog box in the generated agent schedule instances.

Specify whether the agent uses the agent queue capability to process items from the agent queue. This feature allows the agent to temporarily skip over items that fail — for example, because a needed resource is locked — and try again later to process the item later.

• Legacy — Indicates that this is an agent that was created in a version prior to PRPC Version 5.4 and has not yet been updated. This option is not available for agents created in PRPC Version 5.4 or later.
• Standard — Indicates that this agent processes items from an agent queue and that it relies on the system to provide object locking and other transactional support.
• Advanced — Indicates that this agent uses custom queuing. This is the recommended option when the Pattern field is set to Startup.

Note: As a preferred approach in new development, select Standard. To take advantage of agent queue capabilities, you can upgrade a Legacy agent activity to Standard.

Select the category to which this agent belongs. The category can then be used for sorting on the System Operations Agent overview page.

Select this check box to indicate that this agent is to run whenever the system is running.

Clear this check box to disable the agent at system startup. Disabling agents at system startup is useful when debugging the agent, or to implement optional features.

Note: You can override this check box value in the generated agent schedule instances.

Description

Specify the Applies To key part of the agent activity. In most cases, this is the class of the work items that the agent is processing.

Specify the name of the activity that provides the processing for this agent (the agent activity).

Click to provide values for input parameters for the activity in the Activity Parameters dialog box.

For agents of the Standard queue mode, specify the maximum number of items from the agent queue that are processed at one time by the agent before it goes back to sleep for its interval.

If this field is blank, the default value is 0, and the agent processes all entries in its queue before sleeping.

For agents of the Standard queue mode, specify whether the agent uses the agent queue functionality.

When this check box is selected, the system locks items that are retrieved from the queue by the agent until the agent is finished with the item (commit or rollback). If a transient condition means that the item cannot be processed (such as if the work item is locked), the system requeues the item and the agent can try processing it again the next time that wakes up.

When this check box is cleared, the queue items for this agent do not persist. When an agent attempts to process an item, that item is removed from the queue and the agent gets one chance to process it. If it fails, the item is not put back in the queue for another attempt.

Description

Specify whether the Agent Manager master agent is to generate agent schedule data instances (Data-Agent-Schedule class) for this rule when it checks for new agents rules. Agent schedules are not generated unless this option is selected.

Note: You can override this value in the generated agent schedule instances.

Provides a default value for all agents listed in the rule that are set to have a Pattern of Periodic but do not have a value specified in their Interval field. Enter the amount of time, in seconds, that an agent waits between running its activity. This value must be at least five seconds.