Poormans Scheduler

[mutuelinvestor]

I'm a startup that's not in the position to purchase the Scheduler Add-on yet, so I was curious to know what others have done as an alternative to schedule to schedule scripts.  At the inspire conference a couple of years ago, I spoke to a user who was successfully using windows scheduler.  

If you have an approach you are willing to share, I would be very interested to hear about it and the steps required to implement it. 

Thanks,

Jim

[ralph2048]

Just to be clear about this application - It really looks like it takes care of many of the Weaknesses, However at the core of this scheduling tool, It requires the Alteryx Scheduler license.

I know, I tried the batch file and calling AlteryxEngineCmd.exe on a non scheduling license Alteryx designer and it gave me a license error., But with the scheduling license, it works.

[fharper]

Correct Ralph,  It requires the Alteryx Scheduler license in order to have command line capability.  This was stated several times in prior posts. 

There is some discussion on hotkey/macro tools to script keystrokes versus getting the Alteryx Scheduler license and building or duplicating the scheduler I built as well which may be useful to anyone thinking of going this route.  

Much depends on your budget and the complexity of your scheduling needs. 

We reached the point where we needed predecessor relationships and other complex criteria like business day awareness and next business day and prior business day and n days before last business day, specific day or days, + or - n days from specific day or days, pay calendar, bill calendar and such.  These latter criteria are examples of the schedule criteria we built into our system that you don't get with a $99 investment in autohotkey or macroreader.

Additionally we had back-end resources that we needed to know were online/available before running many jobs and we built that into the system as well.  

While we could have paid for a more robust scheduler software, there are others on the market for several thousand a year that offer a good GUI driven scheduler system with many features we needed but they are not as adaptable and fall short of a number of key features we built in our own system.   The downside is you still need the Alteryx Scheduler license to submit from a command line for those systems to work, i did not find one that had the features in schedule criteria and also did keystroke faking.

We also did not have the hard dollar budget to spend $2k a year +- on another piece of software on top of the scheduler license but I did make time in my schedule and used my own initiative and experience to build out my own and it does everything we want. 

As with everything it is a balance of resources and need that drive the choices we make. 

Good luck which ever way you go. 

[fharper]

examples

[fharper]

example

[fharper]

xxx

[fharper]

error

[kaushal711]

@fharper, I'm looking for a scheduler for scheduling my workflows at regular interval. I would really appreciate if could share the code and related files. 

[fharper]

I left that company and do not have copies of the code. I can give advice but the user group posting and community postings give u enough to get started building your own.

I am thinking of building a better commercial version. If you would be interested in that let me know. That would be a few months out though

[Hadzramin_Rahman]

Hi @fharper 

Is that possible to run different workflows in parallel using the scheduler?
How many workflows can be run at the same time? Limitation?

[fharper]

The number of concurrent flows is a moving target based on what the flows do and how much memory and cpu you machine has. We typically did not automate modeling workflows which are cpu intensive. But we do automate VBA code as well as Alteryx flows, really anything executable from command line. VBA macros working with excel workbooks with lots of data and calculations are also cpu intensive but you can set the priority so they do not consume all the resources.

I had coded a limit of 10 concurrent jobs, Alteryx or other, causing those not fired but otherwise ready to reque for next cycle and it would cycle every 10 minutes.

The limit of 10 was based on 32gb ram and basic cpu for a modem windows 10 system, I don’t actually recall the config. In detail but may have posted on this topic previously or on the Tampa UG meetings

I heard from former employer alteryx wants to take away api/scheduled option for stand alone designer installs and the community should riot if they do.

It would disable the scheduler as described here and seriously impair uses ability to creatively solve business needs with and beyond Alteryx.