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rprastein
2010-09-02T21:20:09Z
I don't seem to be able to sort jobs or tasks on any of the columns that display images. Or, at least, not consistently So, for example, I can't sort my jobs by whether or not they are active, nor can I sort tasks by what sort of a task they are.

I currently have two inactive tasks in a group. I can sort the jobs by Next Run, which will toggle back and forth between putting the inactive ones at the top or the bottom (because their next run value is "Inactive"). If I click on the Status Image header at the left, where the active and inactive status icons are, it currently puts the inactive jobs at the bottom (yesterday, it was leaving them scattered wherever they were, as I had more of them). Similarly if I click on the actual "Status" column heading - all of the values in that column are "Waiting", but when I sort, the two inactive columns - today - are going to the bottom, and don't toggle back to the top if I click again. Same behavior for ResultImage.

And there is other weird stuff going on. When I click on a column heading in one group, it affects the sorting in all groups, I am noticing. OK, that's fine. So, if I click a column heading repeatedly (of a column that has mostly or all the same values, such as Result, or Result Image, sometimes it seems that it changes the order of some jobs (not the ones I've been paying attention to), or highlights a different job (maybe it's just moving the highlighted job), and it will do this several times, seemingly randomly shuffling the jobs until finally it arrives its preferred sort order, and then no matter how many times I click on that column heading, the jobs don't re-sort any more. Until I sort using a different column header.

Sorry I can't be more precise, I just keep noticing more and more things and then realizing I wasn't paying attention to those aspects before.

Also, there's a second "Status Image" column to the right of the Status column, but it doesn't have any values. Why are there two columns with the same name?

So, some things to look at:
1. Two columns with the same name (Status Image), one of which doesn't have any data
2. Sorting behavior of image columns (Status Image, Result Image, Task Image)
3. Sorting behavior when all of the values in the column are the same.

Thanks,

Rebeccah
Sponsor
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rprastein
2010-09-03T00:35:54Z
And now, Next run isn't sorting completely, either.

It seems there are two types of "selection" of rows that are totally confusing things. The highlighted row in cyan, of which there is never more than one, and which seems to indicate the row that currently has the focus. And then there may be one or more rows that are highlighted in a sort of dusky periwinkle color. I currently have one cyan row and two periwinkle highlghted rows. One periwinkle row is currently sorted to the top, and the other is somewhere in the middle. The cyan row is at the bottom. All three of these jobs are currently inactive. When I sort on Next run, the sort order reverses, as I expect (because I've been sorting and re-sorting on this column repeatedly trying to figure out what is going on), but it's not sorted right - that inactive job in the middle of the sort has a Next run value of "Inactive", and should sort with all the other "Inactive" Next run values.

A possibly related issue:
As I go through and right-click to disable several tasks one by one (we're going back to Windows Task Scheduler for the weekend, since I won't be here tomorrow and haven't trained anyone in VisualCron yet), if I choose "Inactivate selected jobs" from the context menu, it doesn't do it. If I choose "Inactivate <job name>" where <job name> is the name of the currently selected (cyan) job, it does. Remember, that the other jobs that are currently highlighted in periwinkle are already inactivated.

OK, now I'm resuming the task inactivation after sorting on Next run a couple of times again and re-activating and deactivating one of the inactive jobs, and now it seems to be working. it's really hard to see a pattern.

Rebeccah
rprastein
2010-09-03T00:49:33Z
Now I'm having jobs randomly change from activated to inactivated, and vice versa, as I'm sorting or making changes to other jobs. I do not know what is going on, here.

Rebeccah

Edited to add: Disregard for now, I may be getting confused about which jobs I've switched back to Windows Task Scheduler and which ones I haven't.
rprastein
2010-09-03T01:13:36Z
Everything was going swimmingly, I had one leftover periwinkle-highlighted job that was inactive, and I'd right-click an active job, the only deactivation choice on the context menu would be to deactivate that specific job, I'd deactivate it, and move on to the next one.

After about three of these, I re-sorted again on Next run, so that the deactivated ones would sort together (mostly - my nightly reboot sorts at the other end of the list). Now when I right-click another active job, I have the full selection of activate selected jobs, deactivate selected jobs, or inactiave the named job. I take a look, and I currently have three jobs highlighted in periwinkle, only one of which was highlighted in periwinkle before. The other two are the first and last ones in the sort (not sure if that is significant or not). They are all currently deactivated, whereas the cyan job that is my job of interest, is still active. If I choose to deactivate selected jobs, nothing happens. If I choose to deactivate the named job (the cyan one), it deactivates.

When I now re-sort by Next run, the job that was cyan is no longer highlighted at all, and one of the jobs that was previously highlighted periwinkle is now highlighted cyan. I now have one remaining active job to deactivate. Once again, I have all three activation/deactivation options available to me, deactivate sleected jobs doesn't work, and deactivate <named job> does. Again, if I sort on Next run, the rows are reordered (though all have "Inactive" in that column), the previuosly cyan job is now unhighlighted, and one of the previously periwinkle jobs is now cyan.

I'm hoping some of this activity logging is of use.

Rebeccah
rprastein
2010-09-03T01:39:36Z
BTW, I'm finding it altogether too easy to accidentally "select" rows and highlight them periwinkle - I assume the periwinkle color is a sort of multiple-selection indicator. As I'm moving around, widening or narrowing the column and so forth, I'm ending up with periwinkle rows in multiple groups, and it's very easy to overlook ones that I've selected that I never meant to select.

In most Windows programs, there are specific ways to select multiple items from a list - you either click and drag to select a contiguous block of items, ctrl and click in a single item to add items one at a time, or shift and arrow from a selected item to add multiple contiguous items to the selection. If click and drag already has a different meaning (like drag and drop to copy or to move), that's fine, the keyboard conventions still work very nicely.

Furthermore, in most programs, once you've performed the action on the selected items, the selection clears automatically - unless there is a reason to expect that the next action to be performed should use the same selection.

This is all kind of an annoyance, and seems somehow related to the failure of "deactivate selected jobs" to work. Frankly, "deactivate selected jobs" seems like a kind of a dangerous option to have if it's so easy to lose control of what has been selected.

Anyway, I do hope this can all get sorted out.

Rebeccah
rprastein
2010-09-13T20:46:07Z
Henrik, any idea about this?

Thanks,

Rebeccah
Support
2010-09-14T09:13:43Z
Hi Rebeccah,

sorry for the late reply.

* Yes, there is one blank column - we will look at this
* No, you can sort on Task type currently (also, this goes with every image column) - we will look at this
* There are two ways for multiple selection in VisualCron
1. mark one row and then hold shift and mark another row further down
2. hold CTRL and mark several rows
* you can sort one or more columns. To sort a column click once on a header. To sort multiple columns hold CTRL and click on headers

Henrik
Support
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rprastein
2010-09-14T20:52:51Z
Thanks for lookin ginto this.

Rebeccah
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