• Home
  • Ideas
  • Rules Engine: Make Advanced Scheduler more user friendly

Rules Engine: Make Advanced Scheduler more user friendly

Related products: None
Having the ability to schedule rules to run more frequently is awesome.  Love that ability.





It would be great, though, for this to be more user friendly and intuitive.  Not everyone has experience with Cron, (I do from my linux admin days but my teammates don't).  Could a front end be put on this so that the end user doesn't have to understand/figure out the Cron format? 





I know in your documentation you do have a link to a cron expression builder...but would be great if the tool did this for you.





Bonus points for making Advanced Scheduler available on Rule Chains. (I think that idea is elsewhere in Community)
Hi Jeff,





"adding a cron builder" within the product is not in our near term roadmap as your rightly mentioned there are many cron builders available all over the internet. One can form a cron expression using one of these sites on internet and use it for scheduling a rule via Advanced scheduler.





For advanced scheduler in rule chains, that is definitely on the roadmap. The frequency at which a rule chain can be triggered may not be the same as the 2 hour limit on rules to avoid overhead on the rules infrastructure. Timelines for this enhancement are yet to be decided. Thanks for bringing this up.





Regards,


Jitin
What I'm saying is that CRON is not a very easy to understand or translate concept for everyone.  If after I have configured it using a cron builder, someone comes in behind me to try and decipher what schedule this is set up on 0 0 */2 ? * * is not easy to decipher without having to stop and consult documentation.  





Gainsight should strive to make everything more user friendly and intuitive.   It would be far simpler and efficient for admins to have fields that capture how many hours a day, which day(s) of the week, which day(s) of the month, etc.  rather than 0 0 */2 ? * *.
got it. Thanks for clarifying. I agree that deciphering cron expression could be a painful task. and would be good especially if there are more than one admins who are managing rules. Something worth considering. 
Hey Jeff, just a note on deciphering an existing cron expression, the second link in our support documentation is to a site that has both a cron builder and a cron "explainer" - basically you paste in the cron expression and it tells you what the schedule is.





https://www.freeformatter.com/cron-expression-generator-quartz.html





It also has a killer list of example cron expressions covering pretty much every type of expression you'd like to build. Something like 30 different examples. 





Which totally took me by surprise since the first link we have in our support doc takes you to a site that is not that comprehensive. 





My look when I explored the second link:








I bookmarked the site. 🙂
Is there a way to schedule a rule to run every other week?
I don't have exact solution to run every other week. the closet i could find is following:





0 0 11 7/14 * ?





Example:




  • Sun, Oct 07, 2018 11:00 am

  • Sun, Oct 21, 2018 11:00 am

  • Wed, Nov 07, 2018 12:00 pm (Time changes because of DST)

  • Wed, Nov 21, 2018 12:00 pm

  • Fri, Dec 07, 2018 12:00 pm

In these examples, i see the difference of 14 days within the month, and 16 or 17 days when the month changes.



Thanks but that doesn't get me to what I need.  I created a clunky workaround.

It would be really helpful to have this built in the tool. I’m constantly having to reference other places.

 

Even if we had the option to set schedule every X hours, rather than having to build out a chron for that option. I know for the specific cases (every 4 hours on the 15th minute) does not make sense, but a simple way to run the rule every couple hours should be much easier and more intuitive

I’d encourage you to try the scehduler in Data Designer and see if that gives you enough flexibility, intuitively. It should be something like below:

Let me know your thoughts on this!

@rakesh  yes I have used that and it is way nicer! This is exactly what would be nice to add to rules.

 

 

Chiming in here. From Pulse Everywhere 2021, CS Ops and the mentorship of CS Ops professionals is a focus for Gainsight. I spoke directly with Nick recently and he asked me what could be done to decrease the barriers to entry for new GS admins. I think this is a wonderful example of something that is unnecessarily overly complicated and is expressed more clearly and intuitively in other areas of the software. While the support documentation is very helpful and directly linked from the page in the software, I believe there is a better approach.

As a new GS admin, I would love to see advanced scheduling rules engine reflect the UI of data designer & connectors to schedule rules to run more frequently than daily instead of requiring a CRON expression. Happy to provide further context! Thank you!

Also an example of an opportunity to move away from an “it works” design mindset to a design philosophy that includes Usability, Flexibility, Consistency, Quality, Efficiency and Scalability.  Particularly Usability and Consistency in this case.

I’ve discussed similar with Nick and various GS Product team representatives over the years.  It’s frankly been hit or miss on whether or not it resonates. We need to move beyond just making the platform work...make it work for us.

Terms & ConditionsCookie settings