Task Scheduler - 2019/2020 best practices and optimizations

[KineticKnif]

I am wondering if there are any posts on or experts who utilize the Task Scheduler to conduct various CAD manager level functions and what are some best practices and any optimization recommendations could someone deploy to maintain a Vault Server with 5 power users on Windows 10.

[JamieVJohnson2]

Seeker seeking info on Inventor Task Scheduler and Vault practices... That was me in 2011.  So here are some things to point you around:

Task Scheduler is good for batch file tasks.  Batch check out/in, Batch Migrate (my favorite), Batch save to DWG (useful at times a customer wants cad docs).  Batch from Vault or Batch from HD.  Personally, I stopped using Batch from Vault because it took way to long to load the list of folders (i do have 1.7tb of vaulted files), so I just check out chunks from vault directly and batch from HD.  When Migrating I use the option Total Rebuild to clean files as best as possible, and Skip migrated files so that if the batch fails and can just rerun with out redefining.  Task Scheduler can get stuck and the background DB will get stupid until you find stop and kill it.  It is written that was to aggressively retry the task until a certain number of failures, including restarting Inventor many times.  Stuck inventors may become background processes that need to be killed manually.

Vault, first use, use AutoLoader. its a pain but will help you to ensure all your crap is properly loaded.  Subsequent uses may be difficult if your model file internal references are all messed up.  In short you could have to FIX every missing file before inserting into vault (best practice) or you could drag/drop files into vault ignoring relationships (bad practice).  Drag/Drop is the only way to auto create folders in vault.  Library folder are much more strict and can only be created manually inside of vault.  If you don't need to avoid structuring your own Library.  We use one and use the crap out of it, because we have thousands of files we don't want easily modified.  Vault Pro handles file life cycles allowing you to lock files from editing, revising, and such.  Vault server should be backed up often, but at least once a year (besides full sever backup) I would backup the vault database and filestore so that you can upgrade vault and restore it in the case of sh1!! happening.  Proper backup policy is an auto set incremental backup with a repeating full backup once a month, but who has the cycles and space available for all that?  Why because if a user deleted or moved a vaulted folder, it can get real difficult to get it back, because THERE IS NO UNDO.  So recommend turning on delete logging, log who, what, and when.  At lest then you have 1 month to find out what happened.  DON"T MESS WITH THE VAULT DATABASE... lol I do, and did, and I can tell you its a huge structure to master and you can still accidentally destroy your entire dataset.  Copy it to a virtual server and break the copy!

8 years later I have lots of junk in my brain for Inventor, and Vault Pro... feel free to pick it clean!

[KineticKnif]

@JamieVJohnson2thank you for the quick reply and the awesome detail, I have been living and breathing Vault for the better part of 6 years (i was unfortunately not around when it was first implemented at my company) and have become the CAD Manager but we have steadily gone from one version to the next and I always get complaints of files needing to be migrated, i knew that the task scheduler was the tool to do it but there are no real helpful tutorials with detailed explanations on the purpose of each facet that is the Task Scheduler (TS).

In the past i never had the hardware means nor time available to properly maintain our Vault Database (VDB), but in recent weeks we have finally gotten updated workstations and a dedicated beast for the job processor(JP) that i plan on abusing for the next year in automation tasks to assist our department in throughput. but the current issues (in part with lack of knowledge) is the windows 10 environment. I keep running into situations where the TS will just freeze, with no way to see whats happening. I have an local admin account on the workstation, VDB admin account for the JP, and have the app configured to launch in admin mode. Do you have any ideas on what i can be doing to ensure that it wont hang up while trying to initiate a task or a custom one down the line?

[JamieVJohnson2]

I also have witnessed more Task Scheduler freezes, they are likely due to Inventor Application freezes.  Some times I am able to resolve the freeze by force killing the inventor applications, so that the task scheduler simply restarts a new Inventor application and starts that sub task over again.  There is a database file/service that is live (hard to find its name keeps changing) that you can locate via windows task manager and via your hd.  This database file is the live record of what to do and when to start.  Killing this database allows you to restart a task from scratch.  The importance of Migration is because of Inventor stability.  Inventor does not like to have a hybrid version assembly.  Some known issues are not being able to modify iProperties of older files without updating them, and unstable Inventor application crashes.  So we too learned to just Migrate all used files, however our load is so large we don't blindly migrate everything, only active projects, and all library template documents.  My exact workflow for migration is:

Check out a project folder (or group of project folders) from Vault explorer.

Open Task Scheduler and setup a file task to migrate these selected folders.

Wait for the task to succeed or fail.

Check the log every so often to ensure things are working and not blatantly failing.

Watch the count of Inventor Applications currently open, debate with myself which one is actively being used, and which ones to close because they are dead/or stuck by watching windows task manager.

If task succeeds, check in the files using a separate task.

If that fails check in files using Vault Checkin and ignore relationship warnings.  Files still know their own relationships, and when the user checks in from Inventor that relationship will be rebuilt.

If fileset is important, open in Inventor, Total rebuild all files (Rebuild All command), Save all open files that 'auto migrated' inside of Inventor.  Verify nothing is missing, check in all files inside of Inventor.

If not able to fix, force into Vault using explorer checkin.

For files under life cycle restrictions, you may need to log in as DBO admin (the person who installed the SQL database vault runs under and has windows server administration access), this is the only true GOD mode person.  They can change revisions, bypass life cycles and such.  ANY person can set all files to work in progress, then migrate, then check back in, but that causes a revision bump.  Only GOD mode can force the revision to any value, UNLESS you 'fix' the life cycle permissions to allow such a change (not standard practice, but you could create a custom user group).

Geeze CAD Management is a chore (thankless until your missing)...

[KineticKnif]

oh it seems like the world ends should we take a day off *face palm*... again thank you for the information, luckily (unluckily) for us we only have on project file but multiple active directories than can be scheduled over a few weekends when no one is around.

but between replies i used your method (kind of) i used the task scheduler to check out the files and then ran a separate migrate task and then continued to use a check in task. but i am still finding a large amount of (600+) files still checked out, i have ran the check in task a few times but the number never seems to go down. how do i get them back in?

I have used AutoCAD's check in folder, but the scan showed that there is a large portion of old versions and i definitly don't want them back in vault....

[JamieVJohnson2]

So lets say I check out 1000 files, and run migration...

I check the final log for a list of file that did or did not migrate (some files may already be migrated as the user may have opened for edit at ANY time after Inventor was upgraded.

Next I go to vault and create a search for files checked out by me, and make sure Vault Status field is active.

Then I sort by files that are green (modified on my HD) and not green (Same version on HD).

I then UNDO checkout on all the ungreen files with the assumption they are not going to need to be migrated.  Make sure you're not smelling a rat here, and that the task failed to migrate files that needed to migrate.

This leaves me a list of file that actually modified (green) and are checked out.

Then I go BACK to task scheduler and run task checkin files.

Then I go back to Vault and refresh the list of files checked out by me (better save this one as a saved search).

IF there is a few, I would open in Inventor, investigate issues and check in from Inventor.

If there are BUNCHES, I would get frustrated, and use Vault to check in all the files ignoring the issue with relationships.  I mean what does vault need to know about file interrelations anyway?...  HOWEVER, there is a nifty command in Vault \ Actions menu \ Update File Reference that is may fix some of the missing data:

http://help.autodesk.com/view/VAULT/2020/ENU/?guid=GUID-44FADC1B-BD67-44C6-B9B0-199785234BFE

[rjkdk]

Hello out there,
I am trying to use the trial version of inventor 2022
However I cannot find the "start" button to begin using this function.
It was so easy in Inv. 2010!