Scheduling

Schedules are created and managed through the Configuration - System Settings - Schedules page and are set on each node or alert action through the node/action edit dialogue.

The schedule determines if tests should be run (for a node) or the alert action performed.

A schedule consists of a "default action" and a list of "exceptions" when this default action will not be performed. Using this system it is possible for example to have a specific timeframe in which no tests are run or one in which tests are only run during the timeframe.

Default Action

This is what will happen if no matching exceptions are found. If there are no exceptions then it is what will always happen.

Exceptions

Exceptions are ranges of time in the day specified. Leaving a field blank will match all occurances.

The options to specify the day are:

• Day of Week

Matches the day of the week (Monday to Sunday) or applies on any day of the week if blank.

• Day of the Month

Matches the day of the month (1 to 31) or applies on any day if blank (or zero).

• Month of the Year

Matches the month of the year (1 to 12) or applies in any month if blank (or zero)

• Year

Matches the year (or any year if blank or zero)

These rules are used in addition to each other to try and match an exception so if for example you specified Monday and the day of the month as the 12th the rule would only match Mondays that were also the 12th of their particular month. To match every Monday and the 12th of every month you would need to create two exceptions.

Having specified the day rules (or left them all blank to match every day) you must specify a start and end time for the exception. These are inclusive so if the range ends at 12:12 then the time 12:12 will be inside the range and match. To specify an entire day use the range 00:00 to 23:59.

To define a period crossing through midnight two exceptions are required. For example to skip testing between 23:30 Sunday night and 0:30 Monday morning we could create the following two exceptions:

- Day: Sunday, Period 23:30 - 23:59
- Day: Monday, Period 0:00 - 0:30

If we wanted this schedule to exclude every night from 23:30 to 0:30 then the same two exceptions would be created but just without the days specified (so they run on every day).

You can test a specified date and time below the exception list to see if tests would be run or not according to the schedule.

If a node is not tested because of the schedule then it its status is shown as untested and this result is recorded for all historic tests etc.

If an alert action is skipped because it is scheduled not to be run then the alert is "thrown away" e.g. alerts are not queued for the action.