Adhoc Task Manager

Administration tool ::: tool_adhoc
Maintained by Skylar Kelty
Adhoc task management interface for Moodle 2.7+.
Latest release:
125 sites
18 downloads
8 fans
Current versions available: 2

Adhoc task tool

Adhoc task management interface for Moodle 2.7+. This plugin allows you to report on and manage failing adhoc tasks and to monitor/test adhoc tasks during development. It also provides CLI utilities for running large batches of adhoc tasks at once to offload from cron, for example during annual rollover. Finally it supports custom queue plugins (e.g. beanstalk) for those institutions who need a little more from the adhoc queue system than a cron runner.

See queue/README.md for more information

Screenshots

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Contributors

Skylar Kelty (Lead maintainer)
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  • David Mudrák
    Fri, 14 Aug 2015, 12:57 AM

    Hi Skylar. Thanks for sharing the plugin with the community. I was able to successfully test the functionality of the plugin and I am really happy about the overall clean and well structured coding style. Well done on that. As I can see you are quite perfectionist when it comes to coding, so I just reported an unimportant suggestion for a small improvement in your renderer (see issue #17 in your tracker).

    The only thing that does not let me to immediately approve the plugin right now is that I would like to hear (and see it described here and in the README file) the actual use case for a plugin like this.

    The thing is, under normal circumstances, all queued adhoc tasks are immediately executed at the next cron run. As the cron is supposed to run often (like every minute) on recent Moodle versions, it simply does not give the admin enough time to actually use the plugin. I can imagine there are situations where it can be useful - such as when the cron is not running that often or as a testing/debugging tool during the development. Yet I want to understand the actual purpose of the plugin, and ideally make it clear for potential users, too.

    I am marking this as needing more work for now to clarify this. Thanks for your understanding and the patience with the review and approval process.

  • Skylar Kelty
    Mon, 17 Aug 2015, 6:28 PM
    Thank you for the suggestion - I will upload a new version when I've padded out the README a bit.
    The main use-case we developed this for was to monitor and delete/retry failing adhoc tasks.
    There is no way to see them in core Moodle - you have to look into the DB manually which isn't always possible (support staff, etc).
  • Rex Lorenzo
    Thu, 14 Apr 2016, 2:50 AM
    This would be useful for us. We use ad-hoc tasks for our gradebook syncing at our campus. Our ad-hoc tasks fail sometimes and we setup an email alert to warn us if the adhoc queue gets too large. But your report would let us visually see this.

    You seem to have addressed David's concerns from last Augst in terms of the README. So I am assuming this is ready to be approved.

    However, I do have a question about the beanstalk integration. It looks like beanstalk.php is dependent on your University's system, through the usage of local_kent. Also, what about places that don't use beanstalk? It looks like there isn't any authentication if you call beanstalk.php directly. It can potentially reveal some information.

    What about leaving out the beanstalk integration on the public release and have it on your own university specific branch?
  • Skylar Kelty
    Thu, 14 Apr 2016, 4:19 PM
    I wasn't aware this was still here! The beanstalk integration was added after I thought this had been deleted, though it could be unpicked pretty easily.
    The README still doesn't have much information in it and doesn't answer a lot of David's questions. I haven't had time to go through any proper documentation yet.
  • David Mudrák
    Fri, 15 Apr 2016, 2:58 PM

    I went ahead and approved the plugin now. Hopefully Skylar will find time to slightly extend the usage info in a near future.

  • Skylar Kelty
    Fri, 15 Apr 2016, 5:35 PM
    I have a new version in the works which should address all of the concerns above. Just testing it out now
  • Skylar Kelty
    Tue, 19 Apr 2016, 9:30 PM
    @David Mudrák - I've pushed up the new version, it is rather different so it might be worth another review?
  • Renaat
    Wed, 25 May 2016, 2:15 AM
    Beanstalk folder is empty in the latest version (2016042000), so a lot of errors generated:
    Warning: include(/admin/tool/adhoc/queue/beanstalk/version.php): failed to open stream: No such file or directory in /lib/classes/plugin_manager.php on line 318
  • Skylar Kelty
    Thu, 26 May 2016, 5:30 PM
    Just released a new version which should fix that
  • at the footy
    Tue, 5 Mar 2019, 7:26 AM
    Hi, just wondering if you're planning to update this plugin for 3.4-3.6? Thanks
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