A presentation on how and when to use a WorkManager in Android. This presentation gives deep insight into what type of background service we can use in the background. We delve deep into working and functionalities provided by WorkManger and see how we can add One-Time and Periodic tasks along with various constraints we can set to initialization of a worker.

1. Analyzing in Depth Work Manager
@bhatnagar_g @rohankandwal

2. Existing Problems

3. Battery Issues

4. How is battery utilized in Android
Screen Off Screen On
CPU Radios Screen
e.g. wakelocks e.g. syncs, network activity
Background Activity

5. Existing battery saving techniques

6. Design Principles
Reduce Defer Coalesce
Reduce all background activity If background activity must be
performed, defer it to when
device is on charger
If it cannot be deferred,
coalesce it with other
background activity to reduce
wakeup overhead

7. Optimization efforts in Android

8. Doze Mode and App Standby

9. Native Support for Doze on the Go (Nougat)

10. Juxtaposition between Extended & Deep Doze
Doze Extended
Trigger Screen off, on battery, stationary Screen off , on battery
Timing
Successively increasing periods with
maintenance windows
Repeated N-minute periods with
maintenance windows
Restrictions
No Network Access
Jobs/Syncs deferred
No Wakelocks
Alarms deferred
No GPS/WiFi Scans
No Network Access
Jobs/Syncs deferred
Exit
Motion, screen on, alarm clock or device
charging
Screen on or device charging

11. Background Processing Limitations (Oreo)
● To Improve RAM / Battery performance.
● Restricting Background processes for different applications
○ Services run freely in foreground
○ Background services are stopped when idle.
○ Bound services are not affected.
● Limitations on Background Location Updates
○ When in Background apps to receive location updates only a few times each hour.
● Broadcast Restrictions (very short list of excluded implicit broadcasts)

12. Adaptive Battery & Adaptive Brightness

13. App Standby Buckets
● Active
● Working Set
● Frequent
● Rare
● Never
Application is in
Active Bucket
Has a notification from the
app been clicked
Is a sync adapter being
used in foreground?
Is there a foreground
service running?
Has an activity been
launched?
Is the application not often
used?
Is the application used
regularly?
Is the application used most
days?
Application is in
Never Bucket
Application is in
Working Set Bucket
Application is in
Frequent Bucket
Application is in
Rare Bucket
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
No
No
No
Application is not
currently active
No
No
No
No

14. Existing solutions for background tasks
Async Task
Job Scheduler
Loaders
Alarm Manager
Sync Adapter
Firebase JobDispatcher
Service
Executors/Threads
Android Job (Evernote)

15. Android Jetpack

16. Work Manager

17. Work Manager
● WorkManager is the recommended solution for background execution, taking into
account all OS background execution limits.
● The work is guaranteed to run, even on app restart.
● Work Manager is backward compatible to API 14.
● Works with and without Google Play Services.
● It should be used for all deferrable and guaranteed background work.

18. Internal Mechanism of WorkManager
Work Manager
API
23+
Job scheduler
Has play
services?
Alarm Manager and broadcast
receiver
GCM Network Manager
Yes
Yes
No
No

19. Worker
● Synchronous and runs on background thread by default
● doWork() method is overridden and the task added in it.
● doWork() is called exactly once per Worker instance. A new Worker is created if a unit of
work needs to be rerun.
● A Worker is given a maximum of ten minutes to finish its execution and return a
ListenableWorker.Result. After this time has expired, the Worker will be signalled to
stop.

20. Worker internal mechanism
Worker
doWork()
Result
Failure Success Retry

21. ListenableWorker
● Work asynchronously
● Instantiated at runtime by the WorkerFactory specified in the Configuration.
● startWork() method performs all the task and runs on the main thread.
● New instance of ListenableWorker is case of a new or restarted work.
● Maximum of ten minutes to finish execution.
● Return a ListenableWorker.Result

22. Work Manager Request Types (1/2)
YesNo

23. Work Manager Request Types (2/2)
1. One Time Request
a. It is used for non-repeating work which can be part of a chain
b. It could have an initial delay
c. It could be part of a chain or graph of work
2. Periodic Request
a. Used for tasks that need to execute periodically but interval has to be more than 15 minutes
which will be be in flex interval.
b. It cannot be part of a chain or graph of work

24. One-Time Work Cycle
BLOCKED ENQUEUED RUNNING SUCCEEDED
CANCELLED
FAILED
RETRY
CANCEL
FAILURE
SUCCESS

25. Demo
// Creating an one time worker object

26. Periodic Work Cycle
ENQUEUED RUNNING
CANCELLED
FAILED
RETRY
CANCEL
SUCCESS
FAILURE

27. Demo
// Creating a periodic work request which will execute every 15 minutes

28. Add Constraints
// Create constraint for to specify battery level and network type
//Request object to report it to the server

29. Start the task
Before v2.1
// Enqueuing the work request to fire the Work request
After v2.1
// Enqueuing the work request to fire the Work request

30. Input/Output for the task
// Input data for task while creating a Worker
// Setting data as input for the worker
// Reading data in Worker class
// Setting output from worker
// Return the data back in Result

31. Delays and Retries
Initial Delay
Retries
BackOff Policy :

32. Tagging of Tasks
Tags are meant to be used as categories, to identify/classify similar pieces of work that we
might want to operate on as a bunch.

33. Unique work
Prevent duplicate tasks for the app.

34. Observe work status

35. Retrieve WorkInfo

36. Chaining Work Example
Periodic Worker
(Fired every 30 minutes)
Get RemoteConfig Worker
(gets remote configuration)
BatteryStats Worker
(reads device’s battery info)
NetworkStats Worker
(reads network info)
ReportGenerator Worker
(creates report and send to server)
Initializes Remote Config Worker
Gets info from
network and set as
Output data
Read configurations from
RemoteConfig Worker &
output it’s data
Read data from
BatteryStats &
NetworkStats worker
Read configurations from
RemoteConfig Worker &
output it’s data
One Time Worker
Periodic Worker

37. Chaining Work in Code
Added in Periodic Worker

38. Life of chain (1/4)
Enqueued
Blocked Blocked
Blocked Blocked
Blocked Blocked
A
B
D
F G
E
C

39. Life of chain (2/4)
Running
Blocked Blocked
Blocked Blocked
Blocked Blocked
A
B
D
F G
E
C

40. Life of chain (3/4)
Succeeded
Enqueued Enqueued
Blocked Blocked
Blocked Blocked
A
B
D
F G
E
C

41. Life of chain (4/4)
Succeeded
Succeeded Failed
Enqueued Failed
Failed Failed
A
B
D
F G
E
C

42. Work Continuation

43. Work Continuation

44. Cancelling work
// Cancel work by work request ID
WorkManager.getInstance(this).cancelWorkById(workRequest.id)
// Cancel work by unique work tag
WorkManager.getInstance(this).cancelAllWorkByTag(String)
// Cancel work
WorkManager.getInstance(this).cancelUniqueWork(String)

45. Threading in Work Manager

46. Threading in WorkManager
Internal
TaskExecutor
Listenable
Worker
addListener()Constraints
Met
WorkerFactory startWork()

47. Work Manager
Listenable Worker
Simple Worker RxWorker Coroutine Worker*

48. Listenable Worker

49. Simple Worker

50. RxWorker

51. Co-routine Worker

52. Handle when Work is stopped
● ListenableWorker's ListenableFuture is always cancelled when the work is expected to stop.
● Accordingly you can use the cancellation listener also to receive the callback.
● Override void onStopped() method for Listenable Worker.
● By handling work stoppages ,we abide by the rules and facilitate clean up.
● Return values or Future results will be ignored.
● It is better to check for stoppages via boolean isStopped() method for ListenableWorker.

53. Custom configuration
Used for initializing WorkManager with custom configurations, like -
● Factory for Worker and ListenableWorkers
● Default executor for workers
● Custom Logging
● various Job Scheduler parameters

54. Dependency Injection in Worker
● WorkManager provides an abstract WorkerFactory class which our factory can use to instantiate workers.
Source - https://bit.ly/2ZF8TBQ
● Assisted Injection library provided by Square
Source - http://bit.ly/wmsamples
● Dagger2 Multi-binding
Source - https://bit.ly/2L7Afwm

55. Testing

56. What to use?

57. References
● http://bit.ly/2ZuNRtT - Work Manager Series by Pietro Maggi
● http://bit.ly/2L7ZNK1 - Work Manager with RxJava by Paulina Sadowska
● http://bit.ly/2NLOkBk - Dagger 2 Setup with Work Manager by Tuan Kiet
● http://bit.ly/2HwX3DS - Listenable Future Explained
● http://bit.ly/2MKKUiL - Android Dev Summit Talk on Work Manager by Sumir Kataria & Rahul Ravikumar
● http://bit.ly/30LlZPt - Workout Your tasks with WorkManager by Magada Miu
● http://bit.ly/2MJKbyc - Android Developers Blog: Power series
● http://bit.ly/2LkCdII - Schedule tasks with WorkManager | Android Developers
● http://bit.ly/30M4DBQ - How does Android Optimize Battery Usage in New Releases?
● http://bit.ly/2L5MGc9 - An ~extended~ Doze mode (Android Development Patterns S3 Ep 3) - YouTube
● http://bit.ly/2ZC3n2P - Android Jetpack: easy background processing with WorkManager - YouTube

58. Q & A