Task scheduler - redundant settings "Enabled" and "Stop task if...

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TRG

In the task scheduler I have been tripped up in the past by a very confusing
redundancy in the settings. What is the explanation for these two
redundancies?

1. Under the "Triggers" tab for a task, there is a checkbox for "Enabled".
Separately, within the Task Scheduler Library window (which lists all of your
tasks), you can right-click on a task and can toggle the status between
"Enable" and "Disable", which is reported in the status column of this
window. These two settings -- in the Triggers tab and in the Task Scheduler
Library window -- are independent. You can have it "Enabled" in one place
and "Disabled" in the other. Why? It is safe to assume that many people
will encounter tasks not running because the setting is enabled in one place
and disabled in the other, a totally unintuitive state of affairs.


2. "Stop task if it runs longer than:" setting appears both in the "Edit
Trigger" dialog box and on the "Settings" tab. These settings are
independent. You can set one to 121 minutes and the other to 204 minutes.
Why is it in two places? Which one is used if the numbers are different?
 
TRG said:
In the task scheduler I have been tripped up in the past by a very
confusing
redundancy in the settings. What is the explanation for these two
redundancies?

1. Under the "Triggers" tab for a task, there is a checkbox for
"Enabled".
Separately, within the Task Scheduler Library window (which lists all of
your
tasks), you can right-click on a task and can toggle the status between
"Enable" and "Disable", which is reported in the status column of this
window. These two settings -- in the Triggers tab and in the Task
Scheduler
Library window -- are independent. You can have it "Enabled" in one place
and "Disabled" in the other. Why? It is safe to assume that many people
will encounter tasks not running because the setting is enabled in one
place
and disabled in the other, a totally unintuitive state of affairs.
Click to expand...

This is because you can specify multiple triggers for a task, which can at
times be useful For example, you can use them to make doubly sure that a
task does in fact run at least once.So the different 'enable/ disables' can
help you to enable /disable individual triggers, or collectively enable /
disable all triggers simultaneously.

A bit like the difference between skipping just lunch or say skipping all
meals for a day.

2. "Stop task if it runs longer than:" setting appears both in the "Edit
Trigger" dialog box and on the "Settings" tab. These settings are
independent. You can set one to 121 minutes and the other to 204 minutes.
Why is it in two places? Which one is used if the numbers are different?
Click to expand...

My guess here would be that the lower of the 2 would take precedence, but
it's not something I've experimented much with. But again it's to do with
being able to define multiple triggers eg you could have a chain of
triggers, and ensure that the running task didn't overlap with later ones by
a time limit on each.

So to extend the food analogy I suppose it would be a bit like having a
general rule that all meals should last no longer than 1 hour, but that
lunch in particular should be eaten within half an hour.
 
Oh, I see -- I do not use multiple triggers per task, so the idea of setting
things globally for the task or just for a particular trigger was not obvious.

The organization of all this does leave much to be desired, though. The
specific settings for a trigger's maximum run time and enabling/disabling a
trigger are both in the Triggers panel, which makes sense. But the
enable/disable setting of a task globally is only available in the Task
Scheduler Library list via right-click on the task. On the other hand, the
global setting for a task's maximum time to run is in the settings pane of
the task properties. It's pretty tricky to piece together from these
scattered settings the idea of global versus specific settings.
 
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