KBI 311734 Enhancement: Handling Unstable And Unreliable Email Systems In The Argent Job Scheduler

Version

Argent Job Scheduler 10.0A-1902-A and above

Date

Wednesday, 6 February 2019

Summary

All too often, customers are faced with unstable and unreliable emails systems — email alerts from the Argent Job Scheduler are not sent to the intended recipients

What is far more serious is when the email system crashes it can also bring down the central Argent Job Scheduling service

To mitigate this, email sending has been abstracted into a free-standing exe; if this exe is brought down by Outlook, Exchange, etc., then the central Argent Job Scheduling service simply restarts the exe

This KBI explains how to use this new feature

Technical Background

This new exe uses a Work Order design to ensure no emails are lost – it’s a classic store-and-forward

A retry mechanism is implemented in the new process to overcome transient network issues

Two registry keys have been added to

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Argent\SchedulingEngine to manage the retry mechanism:

Registry details

	Registry hive		HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Argent\SchedulingEngine
	Name		EMAIL_SEND_RETRY_COUNT
	Type		Integer
	Minimum Value		1
	Maximum Value		100
	Default Value		5

This key specifies the number of times Argent Job Scheduler should try to send a mail before marking it as bad

	Registry hive		HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Argent\SchedulingEngine
	Name		EMAIL_SEND_WAIT_INTERVAL_IN_SECONDS
	Type		Integer
	Minimum Value		10
	Maximum Value		300
	Default Value		30

This key specifies the interval in seconds between each attempt to send emails

The free-standing email process is an optional configuration that can be set by ticking the check box ‘Use Free Standing Email Sending Process’ under the ‘Email Options’ tab of the ‘Configuration Options’ screen

Once the option is selected, the process ARGSOFT_EMAIL_SEND.EXE can be seen listed in the Task Manager screen

Resolution

Upgrade to Argent Job Scheduler 10.0A-1902-A or above