Windows 2008 offers some new features which differ from Windows 2003. You may not know about these features yet, but one of the most important new features that you're likely to be interested in is the Task Scheduler. Task Scheduler is a tool which allows you to set and/or adjust the time that a program will run automatically.

Challenge:

If a program has complex configurations, it can take you a great deal of time to configure it. For this reason, in this article, we will take a look at how to run Task Scheduler on Windows 2008. The advantage of this method is that you need only configure once, and yet get results many times.

Solutions:

Step 1: Go to Start -> Administration Tool -> Click on the Task Scheduler menu

You will see the Task Scheduler form as shown below. Right-click on the Task Scheduler and select the Create Task menu:

Step 2: The Create Task form will appear; on the General tab, you must enter a name for the task and check the Run with highest privileges checkbox. Click the OK button to continue:

Step 3: Go to the Triggers tab and click on the New button:

You will see the Time Settings form shown below. You can select any option that you need. In this article, I will demonstrate how to configure the "One time" option.

Input the Start Time into the Data Time picker and click the OK button to continue:

Step 4: Go to the Actions tab, and click New button:

Browse to the .exe file of the program which you need to run:

Click the OK button to continue. Make sure that you see Details of this action on the Actions Form as follows:

Click on the OK button to complete. Make sure that you see the newly created task on the Task Scheduler as pictured below:

Notes:

By way of example, I will introduce to you to how to create scheduler task for Bamboo Password Expiration Web Part.

First; you should go to the path "C:Program Files (x86)Bamboo Solutions CorporationBamboo.Notification Add-On" to open the PasswordExpiration.xml file

You must fill in the required information on this XML file:

Explanation:

qa.somedomain.local: fully qualified domain name

<password-expiring-within-days>15</password-expiring-within-days>: Enter password expiring within days

<organizational-unit>Level1</organizational-unit>: Enter the OU name in your Domain

<smtp-server-name>some_smtp_servername</smtp-server-name>: Enter the name or IP for SMTP server

<from>someaddress@bamboosolutions.com</from>: Enter the email address

<subject>Password Expiration Reminder</subject>: Enter the Title for mail

<message>: Enter the body for mail

Next, you must browse to the *.exe file of Bamboo Password Expiration.

By browsing to "C:Program Files (x86)Bamboo Solutions CorporationBamboo.Notification Add-On," select BambooNatification.exe as pictured below:

You will see the details of the action in the Actions tab:

Upon completion, you will see the Task Scheduler for Bamboo Password Expiration on the form:

You should wait until it runs at the time it had been previously configured to run, and you will see the tasking.exe window appeared as follows:

The result will be shown on the Task Scheduler form:

Go to the Mail box, you will see the message which was written before

See also:

• Task Scheduler 2.0 [MSDN]
• Windows Server 2008 Task Scheduler Won't Execute .bat Files [headcrash industries]