Introduction Sometimes you find yourself repeating several tasks on your computer every day. Or you find a nice back-up tool that cannot be automated to run once a day. Sometimes it’s nice to automate deleting temporary files, copy files to another folder or renaming files.
With TaskPlannerSystray you can automate the execution of these tasks! You can run lot’s of tasks, because you can add many tasks to run sequentially in the order you prefer or require.
Installation First of all the program has to be installed, using the SetupTaskPlanner.exe installer. Run this program and it will install all necessary files. The taskplanner program should be installed in it’s default directo-ry (C:\Program Files (x86)\TaskPlanner). The installer will also install the necessary runtime files.
The installer will also create a directory in the ProgramData folder (C:\ProgramData\TaskPlanner). In this directory you will (later) find the TaskPlanner setup file (taskplanner.ini) and the logfile (taskplan-nerlog.txt). For now there is no need to visit these directories, since it’s all automated. How does it work? When starting taskplannersystray.exe it will add itself to the so called systray in the lower right of your screen. You see the red-white-blue “W” icon below. In the latest version you will see a red-white-bluw "T" icon.
As you can see there is a program scheduled to run at 11:45 called NOTEPAD.EXE. This message becomes visible when you hover the mouse pointer over the taskplannersystray icon.
Now that you have your mouse pointer above this icon, you have two options, click with the left mouse button and click with the right mouse button. Both mouseclicks will open a window. Read below about Click Left and Click Right... Click Left Click on the left mouse button and the main window will be shown.
In the left lower part of the window you can make a language selection between Dutch and English. The program’s language setting is saved in the file by clicking on the one of the flags in this window, so there is no need to enter this manually.
You can see all active tasks and change the setup. You can edit tasks and add/delete tasks using your standard text editor. By default this is Windows Notepad, but you may have another default editor, like for example Notepad++. For TaskPlannerSystray every editor you choose is fine.
You can enlarge the window by selecting a the window’s corner, edge, bottom or top and drag the window to show everything you want to see. Setup When you click the green Setup button, the TaskPlannerSystray’s configuration file will be opened. This is a simple text file with the following structure:
All columns are separated using a comma and all values are between parenthesis. Each column has a “header” so you can see what information should be entered below. In the sample above we have the header plus two tasks. Each task has it’s own line in the configuration file.
The program’s language setting is saved in this file using the flags in the main window, so there is no need to enter this manually.
Two important settings are: (1) ENABLED and (2) ISADMINISTRATOR. With the ENABLED column you can enable or disable a scheduled task. Enter “0” for disabled and “1” for enabled. This is much easier than removing or adding a task and ideal for testing. With the ISADMINISTRATOR column you can provide that a task will be executed as a system adminis-trator. Normally a program is executed from the standard user level, but some programs need extra rights for their tasks, so you have to “elevate” these programs by running them as administrator. You enter “0” for normal execution and “1” for elevated execution as an administrator.
Don’t forget to save an edited taskplanner.ini file!
Note! When you run taskplannersystray.exe for the very first time, for example directly from the installation program, the taskplanner.ini file is automatically created. This file has two lines: a header line and a sample line that shows how to automate opening Notepad.exe.
Read setup changes To read the changed taskplanner configuration file click on the yellow button “Read setup changes”. The window and the TaskPlanner’s tooltip in the systray will refresh and you’re done.
Close If you click the gray Close button only this window is closed and the program will keep running and be ready to run the scheduled programs. Click Right Click on the right mouse button when you’re hovering the TaskPlannerSystray icon and the second window will be shown.
If you click on the company logo or on the link below you will open our webpage on winvis.nl.
If you click the yellow Logfile button you open the logfile. This is opened with your default text editor, just like the configuration file. It’s fine to automate tasks, but of course you have to check if the scheduled program ran at the specified time.
But that’s not all! I urge you to check the results of the scheduled tasks too. So if you schedule a back-up, look at the logfile, but check the back-up destination too to make sure the backup did what it’s supposed to do! Better safe than sorry.
If you click on the red Quit TaskPlanner button the program and all windows will close and the pro-gram is removed from your computer’s systray. Planned tasks will NOT be exeuted!
If you click the gray Close button only the window is closed and the program will keep running and be ready to run the scheduled programs. Finally! Sometimes you also want to be able to close or stop a program at a certain time, for example because files must be available for a copy, a back-up or because you know that a program will otherwise re-main open for an unnecessarily long time.
You can also arrange this with this taskplanner! We already saw this above in the main screen in the second task with the Windows command taskkill.exe. You can basically use this as it is shown there, but you can also create a batch file. To do this, create a text file and give it a name when saving, for example killtasks.bat.
Save this file in the C:\ProgramData\TaskPlanner folder and call this file via taskplanner.ini as follows:
Save the changes and read the changes via the main screen.
Note: The program is provided “as is” and is free to use. WinVIS Consultancy does not provide any guarantee for the correct functioning of the software and is in no way liable for any errors and/or their consequences. As a user, you are always responsible for making back-ups of your data and for testing the correct functioning of your planned tasks. The full license terms were shown to you during the installation of the program.
This program is not part of the WinVIS suite, but can be installed separately if desired. You can find it on our download page.
