I am sure most of you would have used Windows Scheduler to some extent in earlier version of Windows. After installing Vista I wanted to automate the processes like Defrag, diagnostic tools, etc in a scheduled manner. So I started to search for scheduled tasks. (In vista it is under All Programs -> Accessories -> System Tools -> Task Scheduler).
I thought it will have empty list of tasks but was rather surprised to see a total of 16 tasks. There are pre-scheduled tasks for doing defragmentation (which is really good) but I was not sure about the other 15 tasks. So I started doing some analysis and stumbled upon this article explaining about the Task Scheduler in Vista. Features of Task scheduler has improved tremendously from previous version of windows. A task in vista now resumbles more closely to a Job in SQL Server. A SQL Server job can have a series of tasks and you can configure that second task can fire only when the first task completes successfully. I was always thinking some day Microsoft will make scheduled task more close to the SQL counterpart. They have done that exactly in Vista. The coolest thing is now we can have tasks triggered based on actions like Scheduled time(defacto standard in previous versions), On Startup, On Logon, When system is idle, when a specific event occurs (some error is written to Event Viewer). I am sure all the administrators are going to have fun time scheduling new tasks.
Happy Scheduling :)
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