Micros 3700 5.4 Autosequence trouble

[wewantphil]

I have created a new Autosequence, the associated Autosequence Steps (two steps each run a report to PDF), and a Schedule class to schedule the Autosequence to run. No matter what schedule parameters I try, the Autosequence will not fire on the schedule. I've tried stop on error, ignore error but no help because the autosequence never actually runs.
There is nothing in the 3700d.log and nothing in the Micros Event log.
I can run the autosequence just fine in the AutoSequences and Reports app.
Other previously configured Autosequences run on their schedules just fine...
Does anyone have any ideas on what I might be doing wrong or something else to try ? (any way to just use task scheduler to fire an autosequence with associated steps perhaps?)

UPDATE for anyone else struggling with this type of setup: although I went as far as reloading the database and even restarting the server, apparently what I hadn't tried until now was simply Restarting the Micros Autosequence Windows Service. I am guessing perhaps the Autosequence Service cannot load it's information until the Micros database is fully loaded? I am thinking of setting the Micros Autosequence Service to Autostart (Delayed) to give the database a chance to load before the Autosequence Service attempts to gather it's scheduled items... anyway...Once I did a restart of the Windows Service I do now see that the scheduled Autosequences show up in the Autosequence Scheduler Status app (under Micros Applications>Utilities). One of the two PDFs I wanted to generate worked! It is of type Report. The other PDF I am trying to generate is based on an Analyzer.exe view of the data. Again, this runs fine when I manually run it in Autosequences and Reports, and, although it created a log entry saying the step completed, it did not produce the file. It is an External Application step based on an Analyzer custom report.
For the External Program settings I had originally left User Interface and Run Style blank. Also tried Console interface and Normal Run Style but neither worked as a scheduled step
Working directory is: $(MICROS_DIR_POS_BIN)
command line is: analyzer.exe /c1
I don't have any other Analyzer.exe reports in my External Programs list to compare settings to.
If anyone has experience with scheduling an analyzer report to External Program Autosequence Step please let me know. I will update here again if I make it past this hurdle.
thanks in advance.

 

[Wildbar]

Back in the early versions you usually had to stop and restart the auto-sequence service to get a new scheduled auto sequence to kick in. Dont think thats the case anymore. Does anything show up in the logs when its run? You could trouble shoot by taking an auto sequence that does work and changing on step at a time to your new configuration and see where it fails.

 

[wewantphil]

thanks for the reply wildbar!
that is what is odd, I restarted the entire server, full reboot. you'd expect that to be more brute force than restarting the service.
I had applied a known working schedule (end of day) to the new report autosequence and that did nothing... but restarting the Windows Service on a fully loaded production ready database did work.
the scheduled task now runs and the Report step works now, so it may be less of an autosequence issue and more of an External Program analyzer.exe issue with step two.
The 3700d.log shows the analyzer External Program step ran successfully, but the file was not produced.
I wish there was a way to have Autosequence actually report the details of any error it encounters.

 

[pmegan]

Have you tried turning up the verbosity on the Autosequnce Server to see if it writes some helpful info to the 3700d.log?

I haven't had any luck exporting Transaction Analyzer reports in a scheduled autosequence, but I didn't try very hard. Got impatient and it was faster to just create a Crystal report off the TA tables.

 

[Wildbar]

We run a number of transaction analyzer reports through called autosequences. Make sure you set the proper parameters in Transaction Analzyer...not Autosequences. I assume you set the path to print the PDF files somewhere in TA?And you call Transaction Analyzer as an External Program with the proper configuration extension.

 

[Wildbar]

I didnt see you edited your original post to just now.

In External Programs User Interface - None, Run Style - Minimized
Working Directory D:\Micros\Res\Pos\Bin
Command Line D:\Micros\Res\Pos\Bin\Analyzer.exe /c1
(The above lines should work with what you have)

In Autosequence steps leave all the ranges blank.

Set the date (and other ranges) in Transaction Analyzer. Date as Today, Yesterday, etc as needed

And after you make changes restart the autosequence service!!

 

[wewantphil]

thank you for the replies!
@pmegan: I turned on the verbosity tab in Control panel and I see a slider but cannot move it. Perhaps I have to change from Front of House before I can adjust log verbosity?
@wildbar: I made the changes as suggested still no error and no report. I did find I can run the report from the command line and it will product a report but the report is not correct because it's for today's date... Not sure how to specific Yesterday as a date range parameter to the exe at the command line. If I knew how to do that I'd abandon autosequence. so close.

 

[Wildbar]

Are you trying to print the report or save it to a pdf file? If i remember we had trouble printing a Analyzer report when calling it through an auto sequence. Saving it to a pdf file always worked. Ill try and some screen shots tonight

 

[wewantphil]

saving to PDF for sure. thank you so much for your help! this will be huge if I can get it going

 

[Wildbar]

 

[wewantphil]

excellent! thank you so much for the screen shots
my settings are identical to yours! yet the pdf simply does not get produced after the autosequence step runs.
I am beginning to think perhaps it is a security rights issue, though I went as far as granting group everyone full access to the report destination folder in hopes it was just a security issue. I really appreciate all of the help provided so far from you all. But I think at this point I'm going to give up on autosequence steps to produce the report.
I just tried running analyzer /c1 at the command line and it DID use yesterday's date for the report. So tomorrow I will run it again and if the report date advances (shows today's discounts on tomorrows report) then I'll just try using task scheduler to force this report to work.

 

[wewantphil]

@wildbar: again thank you for all of your help in particular. somehow the following thread (see bottom of this post) did not come up when I was originally searching help on my autosequence trouble, but the trouble has morphed as individual issues get resolved. Anyway, the analyzer autosequence step issue was definitely related to security. And I was unsuccessful in creating a Windows Task Scheduler task (either direct executing or creating a bat file that would execute analyzer.exe /c1)
but changing the account that the Micros Autosequence Service runs as did the trick! Now I use Analyzer to create reports and autosequence to schedule them to run

http://www.tek-tips.com/viewthread.cfm?qid=1739035

@pmegan (or anyone else) do you know how I would turn up verbosity if the slider is grayed out in Control Panel?

 

[Wildbar]

Forgot about that step. We did run into that issue as well. Good stuff!

For Verbosity go to Control Panel, View, Check Verbosity, Highlight your Computer Name (ours is MICROSPOS), then you should be able to highlight what you want to change the verbosity logging on and use the slider to change it. You will probably need to be logged in as the computer admin to do this.