Background tasks

Background tasks are jobs that run automatically according to their schedule and manage various background operations on the portal. The portal administrator can only view background tasks, rename and delete them.

At present, the following background tasks are available:

Unique Task ID Description
[Change-Notifications] This background task verifies and triggers creation of notifications based on changes in records if any (direct, all records, and condition notifications)
[Periodic-Notifications] This background task verifies and triggers creation of notifications based on date conditions if any (date condition notifications that are created when a value of a certain date field is changed to a specific date)
[Optimize-Indexes] This background task optimizes indexes (so that the user doesn’t have to do it manually in the portal)
[Optimize-Media] This background task optimizes media (indexes media settings as well as sorts entities alphabetically)
[Keep-A-Live] This background task keeps the portal alive (so that the portal front-end doesn’t go to sleep due to member inactivity)

To manage portal background tasks

  1. In CMS, go to Media > Portal Settings > Background Tasks.
  2. Go to the Tasks tab. 
    1. Task server status – This field shows the status of the server where background tasks are run.
    2. Background tasks – Contains information and settings of the portal background tasks. Only some of the fields are editable; most fields are for information purposes only:
      1. Enabled – Specifies whether this background task is enabled. If the task is disabled, it will not be run.
      2. Unique key – Specifies the unique key, which is used to identify the task. This value cannot be manually changed.
      3. Task title – Specifies the title of the background task. You can edit the title if necessary.
      4. Next run formula – Specifies a cron expression that identifies how often this task will be run (e.g. every 5 minutes, every day, etc.) and is used to calculate the next date and time the task will be run. This formula is predefined for every task and cannot be manually changed.
      5. Run Schedule – Specifies the last date and time the task was run as well as the next date and time when the task is scheduled to run (calculated using the next run formula).
      6. Last run status – Specifies the status of the last run of this task.
      7. Last run history – Specifies the log of the last run of this task.
  3. You can delete a task if necessary by selecting the  icon.

      Important

    Background tasks cannot be manually added. Delete them only when you know what you are doing.
  4. Go to the Task servers tab.
    1. Task server ID – Specifies the ID of the current background task server. This field is for information purposes only and cannot be edited.
    2. Background task servers – Specifies all registered background task servers and their settings. You cannot register task servers manually, however you can delte them by selecting the  icon.
  5. Select Save if you made any changes.

Hangfire dashboard

Detailed information about background tasks (such as overview with realtime graph and history graph, jobs, retries, recurring jobs, and servers) can be viewed on the Hangfire dashboard.

To open the dashboard, add /hangfire to the URL of your portal site (https://<your_portal_domain name>/hangfire/). Note that the user must be signed in to the admin panel (back-end) to be able to access the Hangfire dashboard.

  Note

You must be signed in to the admin panel (back end) to be able to access the Hangfire dashboard.