Exclusion Period

Version Compatibility: Server version 5.0 or later Console version 5.0 or later.

An Exclusion Period defines a period of time when jobs should not be run. For example, an Exclusion Period could represent a "maintenance window" when jobs are not scheduled because operating system updates are applied or a partner system is unavailable.

You can define as many Exclusion Periods as you wish. Each one has rules that define the days on which it applies (the same scheduling rules as are available as for scheduling jobs) and a starting time and ending time that defines the time period during which jobs should not run.

Exclusion Periods are assigned to Job Groups and Job Queues, and affect all jobs within the Groups and Queues they are assigned to. This allows you to have different Exclusion Periods for different sets of jobs (for example, different groups of jobs may relate to different systems that have different maintenance periods).

Exclusion Rules

For each Exclusion Period you can specify whether the Exclusion Period affects job execution initiated by any of the following:

• Scheduled execution (Schedule Triggers)
• Execution as part of a job chain (Job Control Actions and Job Triggers)
• Execution by all other triggers
• Manual (on-demand) execution

For example, you may choose to have the Exclusion Period affect only Schedule Triggers, while all other triggers are permitted to run the job immediately.

Effects on Job Triggering and Execution

When an Exclusion Period applies to a job, triggering and execution are affected as described in the following sections.

Schedule Triggers

When a job uses a Schedule Trigger, the applicable Exclusion Period(s) are taken into account when calculating the scheduled execution times for the job. For example, if a job is scheduled to run every 30 minutes throughout the day but the job is affected by an Exclusion Period that goes from 11pm to 1am every day, the job will not be scheduled to run between 11pmand 1am.

If an Exclusion Period is modified, or its group and queue assignments are changed, adTempus will recalculate the scheduled execution times for all affected jobs.

All Other Execution Types

During an Exclusion Period adTempus continues to process all other triggers (for example, watching for trigger files). If the job is triggered, submitted for manual execution, or run as part of a chain, it is held for execution after the Exclusion Period ends. In the adTempus Console you will see an instance for the job with status "Waiting for Exclusion Period," and the Start Time for the instance will be in the future (after the Exclusion Period ends).

Changes to Exclusion Periods

Once a job has been submitted and is in "Waiting for Exclusion Period" status, any changes to Exclusion Period will not cause the job to run earlier than the scheduled start time shown. For example, a job is triggered during an Exclusion Period that lasts from 11pm to 1am. The job is submitted with a scheduled start time of 1:01am. If you then change the Exclusion Period to end at 12:30am, the pending instance will ignore the change and will still start at 1:01am.

However, before the job is executed adTempus checks again to see if it is in an Exclusion Period. Therefore if you change the settings so that the Exclusion Period lasts until 1:30am, at 1:01am adTempus will detect this and reschedule the job for 1:31am.

Overlapping Exclusion Periods

If a job is affected by overlapping Exclusion Periods, it will not execute until all applicable Exclusion Periods have ended.

Forcing Execution

While a job instance is in "Waiting for Exclusion Period" status it will appear in the Console as an active instance. If you need to ignore the Exclusion Period and force the job to run immediately, you can right-click the instance and use the Force Execution command on the context menu.

Managing Exclusion Periods

To view or manage Exclusion Periods, use the Exclusion Periods window.

Assigning Exclusion Periods

The settings for Job Groups and Job Queues have an Exclusion Periods page where you can select the Exclusion Period(s) that apply to jobs in the group or queue. To apply the same Exclusion Period settings to all jobs, configure the settings for the root job group (the "Jobs" node in the Console Tree).

Exclusion Periods cannot be assigned directly to individual jobs.