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Presented By: Prashant G Bhoyar

Building Solutions using SharePoint Timer Jobs

08 June 2013

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Who am I?

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About today’s Session• Raise your hand if something is not clear

• Sharing is Caring

• Ask Questions

• Let the learning begins…

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What Will We Cover Today?• What are Timer Jobs?

• Common business scenarios for Timer Jobs

• Timer Job architecture

• Developing Timer Jobs

• Various approaches to registering Timer Jobs

• How to Test/Debug Timer Jobs

• Common issues and fixes for Timer Jobs

• Timer Jobs best practices

• When not to use them

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What are Timer Jobs?• Perform much of backend work to maintain farm

• Run on one or more server at scheduled time

• Run periodically and independent of the users

• Offload long running processes from web front end server

• Run code under higher privileges

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What are Timer Jobs?• To Summarize,

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Examples of Timer Jobs in SharePoint• Clean up Old Sites

• User Profile Sync

• Solution Deployment

• Search Index

• Various other Automations/Long Running operations

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Timer Jobs Vs Scheduled Tasks

Scheduled Tasks Timer Jobs

-Create Console App-Schedule it using Windows Tasks Scheduler-Easy to setup

-Create Custom Timer Job-Register in SharePoint

-No reporting available-Need to implement custom logging

-Can track status, history, change the schedule, start/stop using Central Admin.

-Need direct access to SharePoint Servers (Not easy to get)-Request special account to run the Scheduled Tasks

-Timer Job runs under SharePoint Timer Job Account

-Load Balancing is not available -Load balancing is available

-Console Application -Full Access to SharePoint API (SPSite, SPWebApplication)

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Timer Jobs in SharePoint Farm• Central Admin -> Monitoring ->Review Job Definitions

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Timer Jobs in SharePoint Farm• Windows SharePoint Services Timer Service(SPTimerV4) run Timer Job

• Service must be enabled and running in each server

• Start –Administrative Tools -> Services

• The timer job executes under OWSTIMER.exe

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Create Custom Timer Jobs• Visual Studio -> Empty SharePoint Project

• Deploy as Farm Solution

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Architecture of Timer Jobs• Microsoft.SharePoint.Administration.SPJobDefinition : Timer

Jobs are created and executed by using this class

• Three Constructors

• Default (No Parameters):

• For internal use

• Others :

• Job Name

• Job Lock Type

• Web Application or Service

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Architecture of Timer Jobs• Parameters of SPJobDefinition Constructor

Name Description

Name Name of the Job

Service An instance of the SPService class that owns this job. Only the servers where the service, represented by the SPService object, is running can run this job.

WebApplication Parent WebApplication

Server An instance of the SPServer class associated with this job. Pass null if this job is not associated with a specific server.

lockType An SPJobLockType value that indicates the circumstances under which multiple instances of the job can be run simultaneously.

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/hh528519(v=office.14).aspx

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Architecture of Timer Jobs• SPJobLockType values

Value Description

None No locks. The timer job runs on every machine on which the parent service is provisioned.

ContentDatabase Job runs for each content database associated with the job's web application.

Job Only one server can run the job at a time.

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Architecture of Timer Jobs• Override the Execute method of the SPJobDefinition class and

replace the code in that method with the code that your job requires.

• The targetInstanceId maps to the Guid of the Current content database while the timer job is running

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Configuration Options for Custom Timer Jobs• OWSTimer.Exe.Config (Not Recommended)

• Need to modify manually in each server

• External Files : (For Example config.xml)

• SharePoint Lists:

• SharePoint Object Property Bag

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Typical Timer Job Life Cycle

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Two options:

• Declarative by using SharePoint Feature

• Pros: Easy to deploy and maintain

• Cons: Difficult to develop

• Programmatically using Server side object model

• Pros : Flexible, Easier to Develop

• Cons : Difficult to deploy and maintain

Deployment and Registration of Custom Timer Jobs

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SPSchedule Class Types

Deployment and Registration of Custom Timer Jobs

Name Description

SPMinuteSchedule Runs the job every x number of minutes. This class can be used to schedule jobs for periods of time other than hour, day, week, month, or year. For example, to run a job every 11 days, use this class and set its Interval property to 15840 minutes.

SPHourlySchedule Runs the job every hour.

SPDailySchedule Runs the job daily.

SPWeeklySchedule Runs the job weekly.

SPMonthlySchedule Runs the job monthly.

SPYearlySchedule Runs the job yearly.

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Option 01 : Declarative by using SharePoint

Feature

• Add Feature

• Add code to register

Timer Job in the

FeatureActivated

• Add code to delete

Timer Job in the

FeatureDeActivating

Deployment and Registration of Custom Timer Jobs

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Option 02 : Programmatically using Server side object model

• Create Console Application/Power Shell Script

• Add code to register Timer Job

• Add code to delete Timer Job

Deployment and Registration of Custom Timer Jobs

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• Attach the debugger to “OWSTIMER.EXE”

• Debug -> Attach to Process

Debug Custom Timer Jobs

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• Check the History To see when the timer job ran last time

Debug Custom Timer Jobs

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• Change the Schedule using Central Admin

• Change the Schedule using PowerShell Commands

• $timerJob = Get-SPTimerJob -Identity "SPSDC2013TimerJob01"

• Start-SPTimerJob $timerJob

• Easiest : Write Console Application to debug business logic

Expedite Debugging

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PowerShell Commands• To retrieve all available timer jobs

• Get-SPTimerJob cmdlet

• To set the schedule• $timerJob = Get-SPTimerJob -Identity "SPSDC2013

TimerJob01"• Set-SPTimerJob -Identity $timerJob -Schedule "Every 4

minutes between 0 and 59“

• To Start a Timer Job• $timerJob = Get-SPTimerJob -Identity " SPSDC2013

TimerJob01 "• Start-SPTimerJob $timerJob

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DEMO

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Developing Custom Timer Jobs• Set up the solution

• Add a class and Inherit from SPJobDefinition

• Override Execute Method

• Write Business Logic

• Register Timer Jobs

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Common Issues and Fixes• Redeployment : IISRESET and ReStart Timer Services

• Debugging takes lot of time :Use Console Application to debug the business login during development

• Always implement Exception Handling

• SPContext is NOT AVAILABLE. Never use it in Timer Jobs.

• If you use SiteCollection Feature to register timer job, activate/deactivate using PowerShell

• If SPJobLockType is set to ContentDatabase, timer job will get fired multiple times depending on number of Content Databases

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Best Practices• Always implement Exception Handling

• SPContext is NOT AVAILABLE. Never use it in Timer Jobs.

• Avoid using OSTTIMER.EXE.Config to store configuration entries

• In production restart the Timer Services using command

• “Get-SPTimerJob job-timer-recycle | Start-SPTimerJob”

• Use Console Application to debug the business login during development

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When not to use Timer Jobs?• OOTB Options are available

• Content/Data needs to be updated synchronously

• Simple data processing that can be easily handled with Event Receivers

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Is Timer Job Right Choice?• Yes if,

• OOTB options are not available

• Data update/Operation can wait

• Complex time-consuming processing logic

• Would like to restrict certain activities at specific time

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References

Appendix/ResourcesMSDN: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/hh528519(v=office.14).aspxhttp://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc678870(v=office.12).aspxhttp://www.andrewconnell.com/Creating-Custom-SharePoint-Timer-Jobshttp://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc406686.aspx

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Twitter: @PGBhoyar Blog: http://pgbhoyar.wordpress.com (limited contents) Email: pgbhoyar@gmail.com

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