The document discusses the pros and cons of scheduled tasks in Adobe ColdFusion and Lucee, highlighting features, limitations, and management approaches. It presents ColdBox as a code-first solution that offers unique task scheduling capabilities without additional costs and better control over task lifecycle. The speaker, Giancarlo Gomez, emphasizes improvements and new functions associated with ColdBox scheduled tasks.

1. Building Human-Friendly Scheduled Tasks
LED BY
Giancarlo Gomez
SESSION

2. Giancarlo Gomez
SPEAKER AT ITB2023
• Proud father of 3
• Web Developer since 1999
• Freelance since 2001
• Owner of Fuse Developments and CrossTrackr, Inc.
• South Florida ColdFusion User Group Co-Manager

4. The Pros and Cons - Adobe ColdFusion
Scheduled Tasks on your engine of choice
PROS
• Cool Features ( Enterprise Only )
• mode
Allows to define Application level tasks
• eventHandler
Simple Event Handlers
• action
create and modify options added in 2018.
modify allows to update an existing task while
retaining its old values.
• cronTime
* custom cronTime format
http://www.quartz-scheduler.org/documentation/quartz-2.2.2/tutorials/
tutorial-lesson-06.html
CONS
• The cool features come at a hefty cost $$$
• Although you can track in code
• tasks can be created / edited
* server tasks
• tasks can be removed
* server and application level

5. The Pros and Cons - Lucee
Scheduled Tasks on your engine of choice
PROS
• unique
Execute task once at a time no overlapping
• Funny behavior ...
Does not add the full interval only the remaining
• readonly
No edit or delete allowed in admin
Nice way to force in code only workflow
• autodelete
Helps with the bad habit of people not being pro
active about code debt clean up and yes tasks that
are no longer needed create code debt to manage
CONS
• None of the features from ACF
• Application level tasks
• Event handlers
• Tasks under 10 second intervals do not fire
• Access to the web admin can be a bit of a pain due
to individual context

6. Biggest Pain Point ...
Scheduled Tasks on your engine of choice
• If managed in code
Switching an engine will require some refactoring
based on features and attributes
• If not managed in code
Good luck, I just went thru this for a project with
over 150 scheduled tasks split over 2 servers with
absolutely no pattern.

7. Why ColdBox Scheduled Tasks?
• Code First!!!!
Based on your workflow, this can make it easier to manage, track and understand why a task exists
• A fresh, programmatic and human approach to scheduling tasks
Chainable DSL with a human readable touch
• Complete control over lifecycle
Globally and at the individual task level - better event handlers!
• No issue if switching engines
• Cool features at no cost!!!!
• Limitless opportunities!

8. Simple Example

9. New Properties
ColdBox Scheduled Tasks
• New Boolean Properties
• annually - defines that the task was scheduled on a yearly basis
• debugEnabled - defines that the task is in debug mode which streams messages to the console
• firstBusinessDay - defines that the task was scheduled to run on the first business day of the month
• lastBusinessDay - defines that the task was scheduled to run on the last business day of the month
• New Time Restriction Properties
• startTime - limits the task to run from a specific time of day
• endTime - limits the task to run up to a specific time of day
• Information Properties
• delayTimeUnit - tracks the delay time unit regardless of setting in chain so it can be processed on start()
• taskTime - tracks the task time when scheduled on first or last business day of month

10. New Functions
ColdBox Scheduled Tasks
• debug( true|false )
Set debug mode during setup in chain or on demand. This can also be done within the task() method, which now
supports a second argument for debug mode.
• startOnTime( time )
Sets the startTime constraint
• endOnTime( time )
Sets the endTime constraint
• between( startTime, endTime )
Sets the startTime and endTime constraints in 1 call

11. Fixes and Improvements
ColdBox Scheduled Tasks
• Fixes
• nextRun is now set in the task's stats struct
• onFirstBusinessDayOfMonth() now sets the first day properly when it requires to resolve to the next month
• onLastBusinessDayOfMonth() now sets the day correctly
• delay()no longer overwrites the timeUnit and it is now checked in the start() method.
* still has some restrictions / limitations
• Improvements
• isConstrained()
• dayOfMonth constraint check updated. If the day the user intended to run is higher than the last day of the current
month then we allow it to run on the last day of the month with support for leap years.
• Added startTime and endTime check constraints

12. Live Coding Segment ....
ColdBox Scheduled Tasks
https://github.com/ColdBox/Building-Human-Friendly-Scheduled-Tasks

13. How to get in touch with me ...
! https://giancarlogomez.dev
" giancarlo.gomez@gmail.com
! @GiancarloGomez
" https://github.com/GiancarloGomez
# https://www.linkedin.com/in/giancarlogomez

14. How did I do?

15. THANK YOU
Thanks to our sponsors