E-mail scheduler acting erratically.

[glopezc]

We implemented Dynamic AI here in Q3 of this year. I am trying to roll out a couple of reports that would go to executives as an e-mail attachment. I don't have any issues setting up a new Email schedule. Email server is all set. Manual e-mails go without a hitch.

I have set up a test schedule to send me a report every hour. I have set the AiAgentPing service to run every hour as well. It all executes well given several conditions, one of them being that someone has to be logged in to a session in Dynamic AI. This doesn't make any sense but it's true. If I log out and no one else is logged in, there's no delivery of e-mail. The queue may get backed up until the next one.

I tried leaving my session logged in overnight, but eventually it expires, and my scheduled e-mail stops.

AiAgentPing indicates the correct "Last Run Time". Logs indicate that the web server had no error response.

Do you have any ideas?

[Bob Cergol]

Hi,

For sure, it is not necessary for any users to be logged in to Dynamic AI in order for scheduled reports to get executed and sent.

When AIAgentPing.exe runs it uses aigent.ini to find a URL, UserID and Password to use for login to Dynamic AI. It then looks at the queue of reports and runs them according to their owners profile and emails them. (BTW, the agent program's overhead is insignificant and I have it running every 5 minutes at sites I've deployed so there is never much of a wait for any newly scheduled report to "kick in".)

I would suggest verifying the Agent user password and the value in Agent.ini matches -- meaning you'll have to pick a new one since you can't see the password in the user screen. Agent.ini is found in the ..\Dynamic AI Server folder and looks like this:
[AGENT]
MonURL=http://localhost/ai6/AI.asp?UID=AGENT&PW=secret
outfolder=c:\dynamicAI\out\

Note: "localhost" will be your actual web site name or ip address.

Also, under Administration / System / Scheduled Delivery, have a look at the SchLastExe and SchNextExe columns for the scheduled reports to see if the dates are refreshed. (They will be if the report actually got executed.)

Regards,
Bob

[admin]

Hi there,

You may also want to check the system log for server reloads. If the agent is the first request to hit the server after a restart, the request will just initialize the server and not perform any jobs.

The server can restart if the application pool in IIS is set to recycle too often (Microsoft defaults to recycling every 29 hours, we recommend setting this to every 24 hours at a predefined, convenient time)

The Dynamic AI installation creates an application pook named Dynpool that is (should be) set to not recycle at all, but other factors on the IIS configuration can interfere.

If this is the case, either
correct the application pool recycle settings (let me know if you need help with this -I'll need the windows version)
or
try to schedule aiagentping.exe to run twice with a minute between to see if the second execution actually does the job. As Bob says, the agent is only drawing ressources if there are jobs to perform.

Best regards

Bo