Hi all

Not sure where I saw this but I'm sure it was covered somewhere in the forums.

Is there a way to 'test' whether a particular trigger is Active (or Not) and reactivate it if necessary? I can't seem to see a way to do this in V7.0 - does this exist as a task or was it a new feature request?

Cheers

Andy

You can see if it active or not by looking at the Next run column - or were you referring to anything else?

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Hi Henrik

Not quite. I was looking for the ability to check the status of a trigger, for example, if one has been inactivated or has become inactive due to failures, is there a way to re-activate the trigger automatically?

For example, our servers share a common storage device (NAS). We have found that if the sorage server gets taken off-line overnight for maintenance and we haven't been informed, the file trigger fails and retries to connect to the NAS. It only does this a finite number of times then de-activates.

What we would like to do is run a check of all our critical Triggers at, for example, 6am (when all services should be back up and running), and if any are inactive then reactivate them.

We also have a similar issue with Email Triggers. If the trigger fails for any reason (e.g. Exchange Server being offline or not contactable in any way) it eventually times out and de-activates. We need to reactivate it and also, if possible, send a notification letting us know the trigger was inactive.

Hope that explains it better?

Cheers

Andy

Sorry for the late reply.

This can only be done with the API right now. We are thinking of creating a dashboard at logon which can show status of failed Jobs and Triggers. Please make more details of your request. I am moving this topic to Feature requests.

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Hi Henrik

I guess in my very simplistic view, I was thinking about a task that could check for particular triggers being in an inactive state (from a list similar to the VC Job/Task Control Task) and if they are, reactivate them automatically.

I think a Dashboard would be a real big help showing a selection of errors/failures, as I think it is easy to become complacent with Visual Cron automating everything. Then, when something does fail, we have to react to problems after it has impacted on the business, however if we are able to see (and be notified of) problems as they occur it makes it very easy to become pro-active in resolving issues and conflicts.

Cheers

Andy

Hi Henrik

Apologies for pushing this, but do you know if there will be a solution to this soon? We have found that as we are adding more processes to VC the impact of dropping triggers is getting greater and it is beginning to cause issues internally.

In the short term, is there perhaps a powershell or .net snippet we could run to call the VC API to restart key triggers?

Cheers

Andy

Hi Andy,

would you say that the "drop" of Triggers are natural or?

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Hi Henrik

Yes they are natural and doesn't seem to be a problem with VC, it is the fault of our shared storage server where the connection to our trigger folders are dropped due to network outtage (which happens quite often). Because the drive is not seen any more by the triggers then VC innactivates them. Then when the storage server is reconnected, no jobs run because the triggers are no longer active.

Hope that makes sense?

Cheers

Andy

Could you attach your project here (zipped).

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Hi Henrik

See attached - this is just one job that is failing quite regularly. There are a number of similar jobs all pointing to the network drive that are also failing.

Let me know if you need anyhting else

Cheers

Andy

Could you attach your project here (zipped).

Let us investigate about workaround for this - to activate from script or similar.

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Perfect - thanks very much Henrik

Fastest option would be to loop through all Jobs (and all their Triggers) and just activate those that are activated - would that work?

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Hi Henrik

That would work, however what about jobs that have been deactivated deliberately? We perhaps wouldn't want to re-activate those? Unless there was an option also to 'Disable' triggers which could only be set manually and would be ignored for reactivation?

Cheers

Andy

I think we could only give you a fast way to activate all (as a workaround). Other ways require more logic and programming.

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Hi Henrik

Came in this morning and found more disconnects. I took a screenshot but I'm not sure they will be of any help?

Certainly having an ability to restart all Triggers would be a help. We will make sure any other unrequired triggers are invalidated or deleted in some way

Thanks

Andy

I think we could only give you a fast way to activate all (as a workaround). Other ways require more logic and programming.

Please send the log_serverDATE.txt to us.

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Hi Henrik

Log Attached but not very informative I'm afraid. There doesn't seem to be a lot of information in there. I just checked the VC settings and extended Debugging wasn't switched on (It is now though). This log is from the same server that the Pop-ups were displayed on.

Cheers

Andy

Please send the log_serverDATE.txt to us.

This cannot be the full log?

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Hi Henrik

I thought that as well but that is the file as it was in the LOGS Folder on that server, unchanged. It looks as if everything from midnight to 3:30 am is missing, however I have just checked the previous few days logs and they all are also only starting their first entry at 3:30 am, so I guess nothing is happening on that server until then?

I have switched on extended debugging now so will check the log in the morning to see what is generated?

Cheers

Andy

Great, we will await that log then.

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Hi Henrik

Well we got an extended log last night which gives some more details but unfortunately not much more than we already knew.

We have our own IT people looking into the issue but they cannot find any errors at their end although they have found that at the time the errors occur they are taking a VM Snapshot of the servers and copying the snapshot off the server.

Is it possible for us to find some more details about the error other than with extended debugging?

Also, these errors do appear on all of our VM servers at various times which suggests there is a conflict of some sort. If the conflict is with VM Snapshots then it is likely the problem is going to be quite a fundamental one if it causes issues with Triggers all the time?

Cheers

Andy

I only see problem with one trigger in the log:

12/07/2013 02:42:44 Err Error watching directory, err: The specified network name is no longer available
12/07/2013 02:42:44 Debug Reconnecting in file trigger: Returns CSV Trigger, InstanceId: 4, hashcode: 62077217
12/07/2013 02:42:44 Debug File trigger event (RemoveHandlers), InstanceId: 4, hashcode: 62077217
12/07/2013 02:42:47 Debug File trigger event (AddHandlers), InstanceId: 4, hashcode: 62077217
12/07/2013 02:42:47 Debug Reconnected file trigger 'Returns CSV Trigger' . Directory: \\10.20.40.71\ProMail_DATA\@VC\Trigger\tnt\returns, filter: *.csv that belonged to Job 'TNT TranSend Returns Process'

It becomes disconnected but automatically connect a few seconds later. This happens about 4-5 times in the log.

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Hi Henrik

Yes - in this case it does, but in other cases, where sometimes we have many jobs to run (for example some nights we send many hundreds of emails) - the Trigger times out. In the attached log you can see the same error but this time it tries to reconnect and then times out (although with this log the extended debugging isn't switched on).

The Problems we get are when the connection actually times out and disables the Trigger. Then, eventually when the network connection comes back up, which could be some hours later, the trigger will not fire.

Perhaps somehow we need to make some Triggers persistent?

Cheers

Andy

Have you tried just to increase the timeout on the Email trigger connection? Perhaps it has not enough time to parse all new emails.

Thought it was an email Trigger you used as well but it seems you are only using file triggers right?

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