Started having an issue with a couple of Visual Cron jobs about a week ago. The jobs gets stuck on a printing task and just hangs and shows "Running-99%". This printer is a network printer. It has performed flawlessly for a long time. Both jobs that run at different times started having the same issue. I thought that maybe the printer was the issue due to it being in a manufacturing environment and being about 5 years old. So I replaced it with a new printer and run both jobs in my office a few times just to test it to see if the printer was the issue. I figured that the problem was solved so I put the printer into service and waited until the next morning to see how it performed overnight. When I came in it showed the same issue, the printer was hanging up. The weird thing is that this will sometimes print 1 page or maybe a dozen pages or maybe none at all but it still hangs.

I called a friend who has worked with Visual Cron for many years and he walked me through some things and we discovered that the file C:\ProgramData\VisualCron\output\log\VisualCron4.sdf was missing so we created one and run it again and still had the same issue. This did however correct a few errors that showed up in the log files. At this point he said that I would need to contact Visual Cron to fix the issue.

So here I am looking for help. VC is set up on a Windows 10 Pro VM. I just attached the log files and the screenshots of the jobs that are hanging. Any help would be greatly appreciated. I'm currently running VC 8.4.0 and have no desire to upgrade the version. This is the most stable version that I have found of this software. I have nothing but issues with the latest versions. I need help with this ASAP! These print jobs print the build list and work orders for our assembly and inventory department. When they come in in the morning, the orders are supposed to be printed out so they can go to work. Not having this automation requires me to come in 30 minutes early and stop the VC jobs that are hung up and manually print the orders one at a time. So you can see this is a very inefficient way of getting them what they need to start the day.

  log_server20210619.txt (120kb) downloaded 17 time(s).  log_trayclient20210618.txt (9kb) downloaded 17 time(s).  server_startup.txt (25kb) downloaded 17 time(s).  ss1.png (644kb) downloaded 19 time(s).  ss2.png (748kb) downloaded 16 time(s).  ss3.png (725kb) downloaded 15 time(s).

Hi,

unfortunately your version is too old to even debug. In that version we lack the logging so it is more or less a black box why it fails. In newer versions you can enable extra logging for each Task and get detailed output for that Task.

I assume you have tried to reboot the machine? It is probably related to network issue or changed permissions (according to our experience).

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The server was rebooted and I run the job and it worked flawlessly. But when it runs at 1am it fails. I come in this morning and again it failed, then I run the job again and it worked just fine. That being said I doubt it is permissions or it would not have worked this morning.

I find it hard to believe with all the functionality of this software that you did not develop it with debug capability even at 8.4.0. Why would you limit yourself like that. May I ask what Development platform your using to create Visual Cron? Because the apps I build here by default have debug capability.

We don't run a ton of Automation on Visual Cron, only 18 Jobs. If I upgrade to a newer version what assurances will I have that my current jobs will not stop working. And that I will end up spending weeks trying to fix the issues. Not really looking forward to that. This software was supposed to free up time so I could do other things. Seems lately like its creating more work for me than it is worth.

The task do have logging on them and it is enabled. What is the point of the log files that I uploaded if they can't show you the issue.

Can you schedule it to run other time? Maybe network issue at that time?

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Yes, I already did this. I changed it to 3:00 AM. I also spoke with our network guy he said that he changed all backups and any of his automation to happen between 6am & 6pm. So that it would not effect this automation. He doesn't use Visual Cron. We will run this tonight and see what happens. I will respond 1st thing tomorrow after I see the result. Thanks!

OK so I disabled the print portion of the job and wrote a powershell script and created a task in Windows task scheduler, it works just fine with both jobs. So there is no issue with printer or the network it is something broken with Visual Cron the portion of the job that generates the pdf and combines the pages still works, but the print capacity for this seems to be broken. Guess I'll have to keep my eggs in two baskets from now on. Maybe I'll just rewrite the whole thing in powershell and delete the job. Kinda stinks that I can't get any support for this.

OK so I disabled the print portion of the job and wrote a powershell script and created a task in Windows task scheduler, it works just fine with both jobs. So there is no issue with printer or the network it is something broken with Visual Cron the portion of the job that generates the pdf and combines the pages still works, but the print capacity for this seems to be broken. Guess I'll have to keep my eggs in two baskets from now on. Maybe I'll just rewrite the whole thing in powershell and delete the job. Kinda stinks that I can't get any support for this.

Hi Steve,

Apologies for the late response, but we need you to upgrade to the latest version and see if you are able to reproduce the issue there. There has been a couple of changes to the Print task since your version. We do not support versions older than 1 year for several reasons.

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No Thanks! I will use Visual Cron as is until it is no longer worth the annual fee. I have already removed several automation's from it because they quit working. I moved all of these to Powershell scripts and Windows Task scheduler and I no longer have issues with them.

Visual Cron is a good Idea but I won't risk having to spend weeks fixing the existing automation because you want me to upgrade to a newer version. I have learned the hard way in the past. I did upgrade to newer version previously and it cost me a weeks time trying to get my stuff to work, which never happened. So I changed back to the version I'm using now and it worked well until recently.

This software is supposed to save us time, it's apparent to me that it is starting to lean towards not worth our time. If you don't want to help then don't. I'll save the annual fee we pay for Visual Cron and move it all to Powershell and Windows task scheduler, which I'm getting much more comfortable with.

Bottom line is unless you are going to put in the time to fix the broken automation when its stops after we upgrade then it's not going to happen. I'll take that time and move it to Powershell which I have more faith in now.

You can consider this ticket closed.