Job

Overview

A cron job is tied to a specific plugin event. Plugins will generally be named after the component whose data said plugin processes. For example, "plg_cron_support" will process or manipulate various content found in the support component (com_support).

Parameters

Each plugin event may specify parameters or settings that can be specified for the chosen event. Parameters are stored on a per-job basis, allowing you to have multiple jobs that utilize the same event but are passed different parameters. For example, one could have a cron job that sends out an email reminder once a week for support tickets that are marked "high prioerity" and another job that sends out a reminder once a month for tickets marked as "normal priority".

Event parameters are generally optional and some events may not even have parameters associated with them.

Recurrence

Several common recurrences are specified for ease of use but, if desired, one can specify a custom recurrence by choosing "Custom" from the select list.

Cron Expression

# * * * * *
# ┬ ┬ ┬ ┬ ┬
# │ │ │ │ │
# │ │ │ │ │
# │ │ │ │ └───── day of week (0 - 7) (0 to 6 are Sunday to Saturday; 7 is Sunday, the same as 0)
# │ │ │ └────────── month (1 - 12)
# │ │ └─────────────── day of month (1 - 31)
# │ └──────────────────── hour (0 - 23)
# └───────────────────────── min (0 - 59)

Publishing

The following options control various aspects of the published state (when and if a job should be run).

State
The published status of the job. Unpublished and trashed jobs will never be run.
Start running
A timestamp (YYYY-MM-DD hh:mm:ss) for when a cron job should start being run. This allows for a cron job to be set up and published in advance of when one wishes the job to start running. When used with "Stop running", this gives the option of creating a window of time one wants a cron job to be run. For instance, a job can be scheduled to run every week between March and September.
Stop running
A timestamp (YYYY-MM-DD hh:mm:ss) for when a cron job should stop being run. This allows for a cron job stop being run after a given date/time. When used with "Start running", this gives the option of creating a window of time one wants a cron job to be run. For instance, a job can be scheduled to run every week between March and September.