Monitor Date/Time
The Monitor Date/Time object triggers
Policies at a time or interval that you specify. Use the Monitor
Date/Time object to trigger your Policies at a specific time once a
day, week, or month. You can also schedule Policies to be triggered
when a specific number of seconds has passed since the last
trigger, or immediately after the Policy is deployed.
Which system time does the
Monitor Date/Time object verify?
The Monitor Date/Time object uses
the system clock of the operating system on the computer that runs
the Action Server, and not Coordinated Universal Time (UTC), to
verify the Policy’s launch time. This enables the Monitor Date/Time
object to function in virtual machine environments, and to continue
running even when the system clock is adjusted because of the move
into or out of Daylight Savings Time. However, if a Policy is
supposed to start during an hour that is skipped when the system
clock is adjusted forwards by one hour, that starting time is
skipped, and the Policy starts at the next scheduled time. If a
Policy is supposed to start during an hour that occurs twice
because the system clock is adjusted backwards by one hour, the
Policy launches twice.
Depending on the practices in your
timezone, the usual official time to change the system clocks at
the start or finish of Daylight Savings Time is 2:00 a.m., or 02:00
hours. Opalis Software Inc. recommends that you configure a
Schedule to prevent your Policies from being skipped or processed
twice when the system clock changes.
The Monitor Date/Time object and
prohibited times
The Monitor Date/Time object becomes
inactive when the Schedule does not allow the Policy to run.
How it is used
The Monitor Date/Time object is best
suited for scenarios where you need to run routines regularly that
do not rely on events in other systems. For example, nightly backup
procedures or periodically reading and processing mail in a
customer service inbox.
Additional use cases
Creating a Schedule with
conditional links
To use a Schedule, create one
according to the instructions below. Then, in your Policy, insert
the
Monitor
Date/Time object as the first object and configure how
often it should start the Policy. Then insert a
Check
Schedule object. Configure the Check Schedule object to
verify the Schedule that you created. The Monitor Date/Time object
starts according to its configured interval and passes the Policy
execution to the Check Schedule object. The Check Schedule object
verifies that the Policy is allowed to run at the current
time.
If the Policy is permitted to run at
that time, the Check Schedule object returns a Published Data value
of True. It passes the Policy execution to the next object if there
is a link to the next object with a trigger condition of “Conforms
to schedule from Check Schedule equals true”. If the Policy is not
permitted to run at that time, the Check Schedule object returns a
Published Data value of False. It passes the Policy execution to
the next object if there is a link to the next object with a
trigger condition of “Conforms to schedule from Check Schedule
equals false”. This is useful when you want to implement
conditional link branches according to the results of the Schedule
verification.
Creating a Schedule without
conditional links
If your Policy does not use
conditional link branches, or if you do not want to process any of
your Policy if the Schedule does not permit it, you can assign a
Schedule directly to a Policy. See
Assigning Schedules to Policies
for instructions.
Configuration
To configure the Monitor Date/Time
object you need to determine the time or interval you want the
Policy to trigger on.
Details Tab
At
|
Select an absolute time for the
Policy to run. The Monitor Date/Time object will trigger every day
at the time that you specify.
|
Every [x] days [y] hours [z]
minutes
|
Select to specify intervals of
days, hours, and minutes for the Policy to run.
•
|
Starting - Select to specify the number of minutes
past the hour to trigger the Policy. This option is only available
if you have specified 0 minutes and at least 1 day or 1 hour.
|
•
|
At time
slices within the hour - Select to trigger the Policy at
times that are multiples of minutes you
have specified. This option is only available when 0 days and 0
hours are specified. For example, if minutes is set to 15 then the Monitor Date/Time
object will trigger at 0, 15, 30, 45 minutes past each hour.
|
•
|
Trigger
immediately - Select to trigger the Policy immediately after
deploying.
|
|
Every [x] seconds
|
Select to specify the interval,
in seconds, between each time the Policy is executed.
|
Configuring time and
intervals
The Monitor Date/Time object accepts
the following inputs when configuring times and intervals:
Unit
|
Accepted Input
|
Seconds
|
5 - 300
|
Minutes
|
0 - 59 (0 is allowed only when
hours/days are also specified)
|
Hours
|
0 - 23 (0 is allowed when
days/minutes are also specified)
|
Days
|
0 - 48 (0 is allowed when
hours/minutes are also specified)
|
Time slices
|
1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 10, 12, 15,
20, 30
|
Available Published Data
This object does not generate
Published Data.