WFA Schedule continuous workflow through reboots

[ninja]

Trying to schedule a workflow to run indefinitely and continue to run automatically after a reboot without having to trigger flow again. Similar to a datasource but I need the capability for workflows.

[mbeattie]

Hi,

I guess you could potentially add a powershell script to run at startup which invokes a REST call to WFA however i'd be interesting to know under what circumstance you would want to run a WFA workflow indefinately??? What would that workflow be doing and why? I've never come across this requirement so am just curious to understand what you are trying to achieve.

/Matt

[ninja]

I don't want to have separate servers for cron jobs or scheduled tasks to run storage scripts. Need to have one place to manage all scripts/code from. This will also allow me to run both perl and powershell scripts from same server. When you backup WFA it would also backup those scripts.

These scripts do things that OCUM, OCI, Splunk can't because they don't have the data.

[ninja]

Any comments or suggestions?

[mbeattie]

Hi,

You could create a powershell script that runs at startup and calls your WFA worklow via REST with the required parameters. EG

https://blogs.technet.microsoft.com/heyscriptingguy/2014/05/14/use-powershell-to-create-job-that-runs-at-startup/

/Matt

[ninja]

I understand how that works. I just was hoping that with WFA you could have a daily workflow that would run at a specified hour and would persist on reboots...almost like a datasource which I'm almost about to do since there is no better way.

[sinhaa · Accepted solution]

@ninjaork

There are 2 ways to get this done in WFA. Both ways have their pros and cons.

1. How to schedule a workflow for recurring executions: The solution . 

This works on the idea that a executing workflow schedules its own instance job for the next execution. Its can go on indefinitely or be scheduled to stop at a given time. This is a programatic solution, so you control it totally.

It can pass through reboots, except only under one case. since the next job is only scheduled by the current executing job, if your WFA stopage time coincided with the job's sechduled execution time, the job will become obsolete and won't execute. So the next job is also not scheduled and the cycle breaks.

2. WFA4.0 and above have provided recurring schedules to be attached to a workflow. Execution -> Workflow -> Schedules. It provides limited support, and is not flexible with execution times etc, but can run indefinitely and pass through reboots. 

If you want more details, I can provide on how-to etc.

sinhaa