Windows Task Scheduler Kill Brow Scheduling
VERY IMPORTANT: Exclusive Use is Required.
- All Users should understand that there should be a scheduled maintenance period during the evening at all brokerages where All users should NOT be in Power Broker. This is typically organized by the Owner/Admin/Local Tech of the office and users should be made aware of these restricted maintenance access times.
- All Users Should EXIT Power Broker before this scheduled maintenance period and not attempt to log in during this time for any reason until the maintenance restricted cycle is over.
- It is suggested that the IT or Administrator verify NO Users in the system and LOCK the system for maintenance purposes while these tasks are being run.
- If there are Users in the system during this scheduled maintenance period, the tasks marked will not run as intended.
- Very Important Tip: If you log into Power Broker and go to Utilities, Define Your Company Information, GL Account Info tab, you will see two questions about ‘idle time’ Please change both to 80. This will ensure that, if someone is in Power Broker and it is left idle for longer than 80 minutes, Power Broker will bump them out of the policy, invoice, cheque entry, for example, and place them on the main Power Broker desktop menu. After sitting on the main screen in Power Broker, the next timer will close Power Broker after another 80 minutes ensuring that the abandoned Power Broker is closed out for the nightly maintenance routine. *Also, in User Securities, each User should have #47 (ignore no. of idle minutes) set to NO.
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IMPORTANT NOTE: If you are running your Windows Task Scheduler as a Domain Administrator, please ensure that C:\taskscheduler folder has permissions for this user.
The example below is assuming you are running PBTask.exe to run some of your nightly features.
In my example, the PBTASK.CMD will take 1 hour, the PATHWAY.CMD task will take 1 hour, and the KILLBROW.CMD will only take 10 seconds.
The kill brow command closes on a system level the file <brow.exe> should someone be left in the software looks like this : taskkill /IM brow.exe /F
You can see what I’m talking about if you do a search for computer management, and then shared folders and then open files.
The way I would schedule this would look like this:
1AM do a KILLBROW.CMD in Windows Task Scheduler
Inside of Power Broker, the PBTASK events like Pack Active, Pack Archive, Fix Corrupted, and End of Day Processing would all be set for 1:10AM
1:05AM do a PBTASK.CMD in Windows Explorer.
2:30AM do another KILLBROW.CMD in Windows Task Scheduler
2:35AM do a PATHWAYTASK.cmd in Windows Task Scheduler
4AM do another KILLBROW.CMD that would close any files left over.
The Tech Support document on our page explains the Windows Task Scheduler portion:
https://power-broker.com/faq/windows-task-scheduler/
On your Server, you would make a folder called C:\TaskScheduler
Inside you will have three .cmd files:
killbrow.cmd
Pbtask.cmd
Pathwaytask.cmd
The killbrow.cmd will have this:
taskkill /IM brow.exe /F
taskkill /IM coreftp.exe /F
The Pbtask.cmd will have this but with your own mapped drives and server/share names:
echo running pbtask %date% %time% >>C:\taskscheduler\Scheduler.txt
net use Q: \\Zyserv9\dataq /persistent:no
q:
cd bro
q:\bro\pbtask.exe
echo running pbtask %date% %time% >>C:\taskscheduler\Scheduler.txt
**The top and bottom lines of this code will give you an entry if Windows Task Scheduler has started and finished. The results will look like this:
The Pathwaytask.cmd will have this but with your own mapped drives and server/share names:
echo running pathway %date% %time% >>C:\taskscheduler\scheduler.txt
net use Q: \\Zyserv9\dataq /persistent:no
q:
cd bro
q:\bro\pathwaytask.exe
echo running pathway %date% %time% >>C:\taskscheduler\scheduler.txt
**The top and bottom lines of this code will give you an entry if Windows Task Scheduler has started and finished. See example above.
Your Windows Task Scheduler will have 5 tasks:
KillBrow
PBTask
KillBrow2
Pathwaytask
KillBrow3
If you have any questions regarding the information above, please contact: techsupport@power-broker.com
