Use Job Queues to Schedule Tasks
Job queues in Business Central enable users to schedule and run specific reports and codeunits. You can set jobs to run one time, or on a recurring basis. For example, you might want to run the Salesperson * Sales Statistics report weekly, to track sales by salesperson each week, or you might want to run the Delegate Approval Requests codeunit daily, to prevent documents from piling up or otherwise block the workflow.
The Job Queue Entries page lists all existing jobs. If you add a new job queue entry that you want to schedule, you must specify information about the type of object you want to run, such as a report or codeunit, and the name and object ID of the object that you want to run. You can also add parameters to specify the behavior of the job queue entry. For example, you can add a parameter to only send posted sales orders. You must have permission to run the particular report or codeunit, or an error will be returned when the job queue is run.
[!IMPORTANT]
If you use the SUPER permissions set that comes with Business Central, you and your users have permissions to run all objects within the license. That is still not enough for Delegated Admin or users with Device license, who cannot create job queue entires.
A job queue can have many entries, which are the jobs that the queue manages and runs. Information in the entry specifies what codeunit or report is run, when and how often the entry is run, in what category the job runs, and how it runs.
After job queues are set up and running, the status can change as follows within each recurring period:
- On Hold
- Ready
- In Process
- Error
- Finished
After a job has finished successfully, it is removed from the list of job queue entries unless it is a recurring job. If it is a recurring job, the Earliest Start Time field is adjusted to show the next time that the job is expected to run.
Monitor status or errors in the job queue
Data that is generated when a job queue is run is stored in the database, so that you can troubleshoot job queue errors.
For each job queue entry, you can view and change the status. When you create a job queue entry, its status is set to On Hold. You can set the status to Ready and back to On Hold, for example. Otherwise, status information is updated automatically.
The following table describes the values of the Status field.
| Status | Description |
|---|---|
| Ready | Indicates that the job queue entry is ready to be run. |
| In Process | Indicates that the job queue entry is in process. This field is updated while the job queue is running. |
| On Hold | Default. Indicates the status of the job queue entry when it is created. Choose the Set Status to Ready action to change the status to Ready. Choose the Set On Hold or Suspend actions to change the status back to On Hold. |
| Error | Indicates that there is an error. Choose Show Error to see the error message. |
| Finished | Indicates that the job queue entry is complete. |
To view status for any job
- Choose the
icon, enter Job Queue Entries, and then choose the related link. - On the Job Queue Entries page, select a job queue entry, and then choose the Log Entries action.
[!TIP] You can also view the status of job queue entries by using Application Insights in Microsoft Azure for more in-depth analysis based on telemetry. For more information, see Monitoring and Analyzing Telemetry and Analyzing Job Queue Lifecycle Trace Telemetry in the Business Central developer and administration content.
View scheduled tasks
The Scheduled Tasks page in Business Central shows which tasks are ready to run in the job queue. The page also shows information about the company that each task is set up to run in. However, only tasks that are marked as belonging to the current environment can run.
For example, if the current company is in an environment that is a copy of another environment, all scheduled tasks are automatically stopped. Use the Scheduled Tasks page to set tasks as ready to run in the job queue.
[!NOTE] Internal administrators and users can schedule tasks to run. Delegated administrators cannot.
The My Job Queue Part
The My Job Queue part on your Role Center shows the job queues entries that you have started, but which are not yet finished. By default, the part is not visible, so you have to add it to your Role Center. For more information, see Personalize Your Workspace.
The part shows which documents with your ID in the Assigned User ID field are being processed or are queued, including those related to background posting. The part can tell you at a glance whether there has been an error in the posting of a document or if there are errors in a job queue entry. The part also lets you cancel a document posting if it is not running.
To view an error from the My Job Queue part
- On an entry with the status Error, choose the Show Error action.
- Review the error message and fix the problem.
Examples of what can be scheduled using job queue
Schedule reports
You can schedule a report or batch job to run at a specific date and time. Scheduled reports and batch jobs are entered in the job queue and processed at the scheduled time, similar to other jobs. You choose the Schedule option after you choose the Send to action, and then you enter information such as printer, time and date, recurrence.
For more information, see Scheduling a Report to Run
Schedule synchronization between ---
author: edupont04
ms.topic: include ms.date: 04/01/2021 ms.author: edupont
Dataverse
If you have integrated Business Central. For more information, see Scheduling a Synchronization between Business Central and Dynamics 365 Sales.
Schedule the posting of sales and purchase orders
Job queues are an effective tool to schedule the running of business processes in the background, such as when multiple users are trying to post sales orders, but only one order can be processed at a time.
For more information, see To set up background posting with job queues
Monitor the job queue with telemetry
As an administrator, you can use Application Insights to gather and analyze telemetry that you can use to identify problems. For more information, see Monitoring and Analyzing Telemetry in the developer and administration content.
See Also
Administration
Setting Up Business Central
Change Basic Settings
Analyzing Job Queue Lifecycle Trace Telemetry
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