Persistent scheduling techniques
View Patent ↗Techniques for persistent scheduling are provided. A principal registers a schedule with a network-based scheduling service. The scheduling service determines when a trigger is to be sent to a client associated with the principal for purposes of having that client process a particular action. The trigger is sent when the client is detected as being online; and when the client is offline, the trigger is sent as soon as the client comes online. Furthermore, once a trigger is successfully sent, a current date and time that the trigger was sent is maintained with the schedule for the client.
1. A machine-implemented method for executing on a processing device, comprising:
determining, by the processing device, that a client has re-connected to a network;
inspecting, by the processing device, a schedule associated with the client, each entry of the schedule includes: an identifier for the client, a particular task that the client is to receive notifications for, a policy defining when the client is to receive the notifications, a resource identifier that identifies an action that the client is to process when it receives the notifications, a past due flag indicating a past due action that was past due before the client has re-connected to the network, and a last date and time that a last notification was sent to the client;
setting, by the processing device, the past due flag by comparing the last date and time that the last notification was sent to the client against a current date and time and in view of the policy retained within the schedule that indicates a frequency for sending the notifications;
detecting, by the processing device, the past due action for the client within the schedule by inspecting whether the past due flag is set to determine that sending a notification is past due;
sending, by the processing device, the notification to the client just once to process the action defined in the schedule, the action associated with the past due action, and the notification sent just once in response to both detecting the past due action and determining that the client has re-connected to the network;
updating, by the processing device, the schedule to indicate the current date and time that the notification is successfully sent to the client; and
ensuring, by the processing device, based on the updated schedule that the notification is not resent to the client until the policy indicates the notification is to be resent.
2. The method of claim 1 , further comprising maintaining, by the processing device, a plurality of additional schedules for additional clients and additional policies for when additional actions are to be processed by the additional clients and for when additional notifications are to be sent to the additional clients to process the additional actions.
3. The method of claim 2 , further comprising sorting, by the processing device, entries of the schedule within additional entries of the additional schedules in an ascending order and placing particular entries associated with being past due first.
4. The method of claim 1 , wherein the step of determining further comprises previously registering the schedule for a principal of the client.