10 Automating Administrative Tasks

This chapter provides the steps you take to set up the Automation Service and schedule jobs that perform routine portal administration tasks.

About Jobs

Jobs allow you to schedule portal management operations. A job is a collection of related operations. Each operation is one task, such as a crawl for documents, an import of users, or one of the system maintenance tasks.

You must run jobs to perform the following actions:

• Import or synchronize users and groups through an authentication source

• Import or refresh documents through a content crawler

• Perform external operations

• Run and store content for some portlets

• Import user information through a profile source

• Move or copy content through a smart sort (the portal creates and runs the job automatically)

About Portal Agents

The portal comes with several operations that can only be accessed through the jobs with which they are associated. These special operations are referred to as agents.

The following agent jobs are stored, by default, in the Intrinsic Operations folder:

• The Audit Log Management Agent job archives old audit messages into files and deletes old audit files.

  The Audit Log Management Agent job also archives and deletes audit files according to the schedule set in the Audit Manager utility.

• The Bulk Subscriptions Agent job subscribes users in bulk to the communities and portlets you specify in the Bulk Add editor.

• The Document Refresh Agent job performs background maintenance on your Knowledge Directory, such as refreshing document links and properties, and deleting expired documents.

• The Dynamic Membership Update Agent job updates dynamic portal group memberships.

• The Search Update Agent job makes sure the search collection is synchronized with the database. You can run multiple instances of this job at the same time.

  The Search Update Agent job also repairs the search index according to the frequency set in the Search Service Manager utility.

• The Weekly Housekeeping Agent job performs weekly housekeeping on your system, such as deleting expired invitation codes and old job logs and removing community members who no longer have access to a community.

About Running Scripts Through the Portal

An external operation enables you to run shell scripts (for example, .sh or .bat files) through the portal and schedule these actions through portal jobs. For example, you might want to create a script that queries documents, pings portal servers, e-mails snapshot query results to users, or runs some other custom job, then create an external operation that points to the script, and use a job to run the script on a specified schedule.

External Operations Created Upon Installation

When you install the portal, there are two working example external operations that are created in the Intrinsic Operations portal folder:

• Bulk Subscriber: This external operation subscribes users to communities and groups when you use bulk add.

• Snapshot Query Mailer: This is a sample external operation that e-mails the results of snapshot queries to users.

  For more information on this external operation, see E-mailing the Results of a Snapshot Query.

Creating External Operations to Run Scripts Through the Portal

To create an external operation you must have the following rights and privileges:

• Access Administration activity right

• Create External Operations activity right

• At least Edit access to the parent folder (the folder that will store the external operation)

• At least Edit access to the job that will run this external operation

Note:

• Because the standard error output from the command or script is captured to the job log, avoid the use of new shells, redirects, and pipes.

• Passing arguments to cmd or start in shell programs might disable the time-out mechanism.

• When you are extending scripts in the External Operation Editor, carefully consider all potential effects of the scripts. Make sure that your script does not introduce a security risk.

1. Click Administration.

2. Open the folder in which you want to store the external operation.

3. In the Create Object list, click External Operation.

4. In the Operating System Command box, type the relative path and file name of the script enclosed in quotes (“).

   Note:

   All external operation scripts must reside in the scripts directory of each of the Automation Services that will run them. The scripts directory is located on the computer that hosts the Automation Service, in the Oracle WebCenter Interaction installation directory (for example, C:\bea\alui\ptportal\scripts). The Automation Service will not run any scripts that are not in this directory.

   The following tokens in the command line will be substituted:

   • names of environment variables surrounded with percent signs (%)

   • <user_id>

   • <security_token>

   • <job_id>

   • <operation_id>

   • <last_job_runtime>

   Expanded tokens that contain spaces or special characters which are not surrounded with quotes (“) are enclosed in quotes automatically.

5. In the Time-out in seconds box, type the number of seconds after which, if this operation is still running, you want the job to stop.

   If you do not want to set a time-out, leave this setting at 0 (infinite).

To run this operation, you must associate it with a job and schedule the job to run.

Registering Automation Services

Before you can run jobs, you need to register any computers hosting Automation Services and register job folders with those Automation Services. The primary Automation Service is registered when you install the Automation Service and execute the related database scripts described in the Installation Guide for Oracle WebCenter Interaction.

To access the Automation Service Utility you must be a member of the Administrators Group.

1. Click Administration.

2. In the Select Utility list, click Automation Service.

3. Click Add Automation Service.

   The Register Automation Service dialog box opens.

4. Type the name of the computer that hosts the Automation Service.

   Use the host name only (for example, automationserver1), not the fully qualified domain name.

5. Type the network address that identifies the machine.

6. Click Finish.

The new Automation Service appears in the list. To the right of each Automation Service, you can see if the server is online or offline and when the job folders associated with the server were last updated.

You must assign job folders to this Automation Service before you can run jobs with it.

Registering Job Folders to Run Jobs

Jobs can run only if the folder in which they are stored is assigned to an Automation Service. All of the jobs in a folder are run by one or more Automation Services. If multiple Automation Services are associated with a single folder, the BEA ALI Automation Service assigns jobs according to the resources available on each Automation Service.

To access the Automation Service Utility you must be a member of the Administrators Group.

Note:

You must register each folder separately. An Automation Service does not monitor child folders of registered folders.

1. Click Administration.

2. In the Select Utility list, click Automation Service.

3. Click the name of the Automation Service that you want to run the jobs.

   The Register Folders Editor opens.

4. Click Add Folder.

   The Add Job Folder dialog box opens.

The job folder appears in the list. Under each registered job folder, you can see the jobs stored in that folder and the next time each job is scheduled to run.

• To edit a job, click its name.

• To remove a job folder, select the folder and click the Remove icon.

  To select or clear all of the folder check boxes, select or clear the box to the left of Folders.

Starting the BEA ALI Automation Service

The Automation Service runs as a Windows service or a daemon. Ensure the BEA ALI Automation Service is configured to start automatically when you boot your system. For information on configuring the BEA ALI Automation Service to start automatically, see the Installation Guide for Oracle WebCenter Interaction.

Creating Jobs

When you create portal objects that require related jobs, the Create Object editor includes a page to configure and schedule the related job. If you want to create additional jobs independently of the Create Object editors, follow the instructions in this section.

1. Click Administration.

2. Open an administrative folder.

3. In the Create Object list, click Job.

4. Schedule your job to run.

Associating an Object with a Job

On the Set Job page, you can associate an object with a new or existing job. You run jobs to import users with authentication sources, import content with content crawlers, run external operations, and import user information with profile sources.

Before you can run jobs, you must:

• Confirm that the BEA ALI Automation Service is running on the Automation Service machine. If it is not running, start it now, as described in Starting the BEA ALI Automation Service.

• Register the Automation Service with the portal, as described in Registering Automation Services.

• Assign administrative folders to the registered Automation Services, as described in Registering Job Folders to Run Jobs.

1. Open the object's editor by creating a new object or editing an existing object.

2. Click the Set Job page.

3. Associate the object with one or more jobs:

   • To run this object with an existing job, click Add Job; then, in the Choose Jobs dialog box, select the jobs you want to add this object to and click OK.

   • To create a new job to run this object, click Create Job, then, in the Job Editor, schedule your job and click Finish.

   • To remove a job, select the job and click the remove icon.

     To select or clear all of the job check boxes, select or clear the check box to the left of Job Name.

   • To edit a job, click the job name.

     If you added this object to an existing job, you might want to verify that the job is scheduled to run.

   • To change the order in which the jobs are sorted, click Job Name.

Viewing Job Status and Job Logs

You can view a history for a job as well as the logs from each job on the Job History page of the Automation Service Utility.

To access the Automation Service Utility you must be a member of the Administrators group.

1. Click Administration.

2. In the Select Utility list, click Automation Service.

3. Click Job History page.

4. View the history of jobs that have run and the logs for individual jobs.

   • To view the detailed job log for a job, click the name of the job.

     The log appears in a dialog box.

   • To search the log, in the job log dialog box, enter a search term (using wildcards such as *) and click Search Log.

   • To limit the histories displayed on this page, in the View and to boxes, type the earliest and latest dates for which you want to view job histories and click >>.

     To choose the date from a calendar, click the Calendar icon.

   • To remove the filter clear the View and to boxes and click >>.

   • To refresh the job history data, click the Refresh icon.

   • To download a text file version of a detailed job log, click the Download icon to the far-right of the job name; when asked to open or save the file, click Save, specify a location in which to save the file, and click Save again.

Job History Information

The Job History page of the Automation Service Utility provides information about in-process and completed jobs.

Column	Description
Job Name	Displays the name of the job. Click the job name to view the detailed job log.
Server	Displays the name of the Automation Service that ran the job.
Next Run	Displays the next date and time the job is scheduled to run.
Start	Displays the starting date and time for the last time the job ran.
Finish	Displays the ending date and time for the last time the job ran.
Status	Displays what happened when the job ran last: Succeeded indicates that the job was able to complete. Failed (in red text) indicates that the job experienced errors and was not able to complete. In Process indicates that the job is running now. Interrupted indicates that the job was terminated unexpectedly. Suspended indicates that the job stopped before completing its work and will resume its work at the next scheduled runtime.
Download	Click the button to download a text file version of the detailed job log.

Deleting Job Histories

On the Job History page of the Automation Service Utility, you can delete job histories from the database.

To access the Automation Service Utility you must be a member of the Administrators group.

1. Click Administration.

2. In the Select Utility list, click Automation Service.

3. Click Job History page.

4. To delete job histories from the database, in the Delete to box, type the latest date for which you want to delete histories and click >>.

   To choose the date from a calendar, click the Calendar icon.

   Any histories with this date or an earlier date are deleted from the database.

Aborting In-Process Jobs

On the Job History page of the Automation Service Utility, you can stop a job that is processing.

To access the Automation Service Utility you must be a member of the Administrators group.

1. Click Administration.

2. In the Select Utility list, click Automation Service.

3. Click Job History page.

4. To cancel a job, select the job and click Abort.

   Note:

   You cannot cancel jobs that have already completed. The check boxes next to completed jobs are unavailable (grayed out).