Using Operating System Scheduling on Windows Systems

How Operating System Scheduling Works on Windows Systems

When you schedule a flow using a Windows operating system scheduling server, Schedule Manager creates a script file called flowname.vbs.

The script file and the job status information are written to the path outdir\user-name\flowname, where outdir is the value of the Control Directory attribute in the operating system scheduling server definition.

The path must be a valid Windows path. Valid Windows paths include relative paths, Universal Naming Convention (UNC) paths (for example \\server\volume\directory), and mapped paths. If the path is invalid, or if it points to a file instead of a directory, then an error message is written to the SAS log.

Manually Submitting a Flow for Execution on a Windows Operating System Scheduling Server

If you need to manually submit a flow that has been scheduled on a Windows operating system, you can do any of the following:

Execute the generated script flowname.vbs. The file is located in the following path:
```
outdir\user-name\flowname
```
Either double-click the filename in Windows Explorer, or execute it from a command prompt.
Use the Windows Task Scheduler to manually schedule the script. To access the Task Scheduler, select Scheduled Tasks on the Control Panel. You can also use the schtasks command line interface to surface many functions of the Task Scheduler.
Use the at command to manually schedule the script. The capabilities of this command are more limited than those of the Task Scheduler. See your operating system documentation for details.

Manually Canceling a Scheduled Flow on a Windows Operating System Scheduling Server

If you need to manually cancel a flow that has been scheduled on Windows, you can do either of the following:

Use the Windows Task Scheduler to cancel the job.
Use the /del option of the at command. You can use this method only if the job was submitted with the at command.

After a scheduled flow has been canceled, you can remove the script that was created for the flow.

Limitations of Windows Operating System Scheduling Servers

Jobs in a flow are run sequentially so that the status of each job can be logged in the status file.

The following limitations apply to Windows operating system scheduling:

The user ID under which the job will be run must have Local Administration rights. To grant these rights, you must add the user to the Administrators Group.
Windows scheduling executes jobs using the Windows Task Scheduler. As a default, the scheduled tasks execute using the LOCAL SYSTEM user account. Therefore, scheduled jobs have full and open access to the machine.
The following types of trigger events are not supported on Windows:
- Skip interval is greater than 1 and the interval type is Monthly or Yearly.
- Last Day is selected and the interval type is Monthly or Yearly.
If you specify one of these triggers, then a script is created. However, the script is not submitted for execution, and an error message similar to the following is written to the log:
```
ERROR: One or more flows were not successfully scheduled.
ERROR: triggeroption is currently not supported for 
intervaltype events on Windows systems
```
Always test the command that is contained in a job before you schedule the job.