Title: CF Scheduled Tasks: more than you may know, and should

If folks were asked to discuss CF scheduled tasks, I suspect most would feel "there's not much 'to say", but there really is a lot more to working with them simply "setting a given url to run on a given schedule" (did you know it could be a CFC, for instance?).

There are both more features than most realize, as well as solutions to common problems people can face when running them, and a lot of myths regarding old limitations that have since been lifted. In this talk, veteran CF troubleshooter Charlie Arehart will address all these and more, starting with a focus on tools and techniques for solving common problems with them, then showing several ways to create them (yes, even more than just cfschedule and the CF Admin UI).

He'll then review several features of using tasks that you may have missed--to include distinguishing which few are NOT available in CF Standard.

He'll also discuss briefly the underlying quartz open source framework that powers them (and offers still more extensibility), as well as the underlying neo-cron.xml file and tips for protecting that, and he'll even identify ways to control/allow access to managing tasks that may surprise many. He'll conclude with alternatives when the base features don't suit you.

So yeah, a lot more to the topic than most might imagine! As always, Charlie will provide links to resources with more info (docs, videos, and more).

You can register to attend, for free, at the meetup event page, and the sessions are recorded.

Some of my readers may be curious to hear the back-story: John put out a call on the Facebook CF Programmers group, asking if someone could present a talk on CF Scheduled tasks this month. While one response was "that would be a short presentation", I knew there was far more to the CF Scheduled Tasks feature than most realize, and so I volunteered. The title and description are a retort to that response. :-)

Indeed, I'll be hard-pressed to say too much on each of the many points given just 60 mins, but they are all worthy ones folks should at least be aware of--and were to find more info. I can see creating either blog posts or additional presentations that expand on some of them. We shall see.

PS And yes, before some readers may ask or wonder, in the "alternatives" discussion I will indeed mention the power of Coldbox scheduled tasks--which can be used with other than ColdBox (well, if you're using wirebox, logbox, or cachebox, at least). I won't be able to elaborate on the feature but will point to resources/recordings with much more info.

For more content like this from Charlie Arehart:

• Signup to get his blog posts by email:
• Follow his blog RSS feed
• View the rest of his blog posts
• View his blog posts on the Adobe CF portal

Need more help with problems?

• If you may prefer direct help, rather than digging around here/elsewhere or via comments, he can help via his online consulting services
• See that page for more on how he can help a) over the web, safely and securely, b) usually very quickly, c) teaching you along the way, and d) with satisfaction guaranteed