Overview: Abbadabba’s follows a more “traditional” polling model, in line with other retailers of similar size. All polling tasks are done via Windows Task Scheduler at the main server and each store server.
Computers Used:
SimpleHelp Location Computer Name
Warehouse/Tucker AbbaCorpServer (Head Office Server)
Buckhead/BHD 002A-BHD-V9 (Store Server)
East Cobb/ECB 003A-ECB-V9 (Store Server)
Little 5 Points/L5P 001A-L5P-V9 (Store Server)
General Sequence of Events:
1. Store servers process out (and then process in files from the server from the previous Exchange cycle)
2. Store servers Exchange
3. Main server processes in
4. Main server processes out
Store Server Setup:
Important ECM Setting: ECM – WS Preferences – General – Rules: “Process In immediately after Send/Receive” – this allows us to let Process In to occur automatically without having to schedule it to run.
Windows Task Scheduler runs two scheduled tasks – Process Out and Exchange which run each hour:
If you open up each task, you will see they each launch their respective executables with command line parameters (username/password, etc):
In addition, you will see other tasks in Windows Task Scheduler:
· Recalc PO: Runs TechToolKit and recalcs the PO Fill %
· Daily Incremental Backups – copies incremental Oracle backup files to the external drive
· Monthly Clear ECM Logs – clears the ECM Processing logs files and the Exchange log.
· Nightly Reboot – this is set to “one-time” and does not run on a schedule – but if you need to schedule a reboot, you can use this task.
· Nightly Maintenance – this runs various TechToolkit tasks like database tunes, reindexes, delta builds, etc.
· Restart Oracle Services – this simply restarts Oracle services and RPRO License server to make sure they are running.
Head Office Server Setup (AbbaCorpServer):
Important ECM Setting: Unlike the stores, this setting needs to be unchecked: ECM – WS Preferences – General – Rules: “Process In immediately after Send/Receive”
Like the stores, the main/warehouse server uses Windows Task Scheduler to run the polling tasks:
However, the main server uses a batch file to Process In:
Here is what the batch file looks like:
And the same for Processing Out:
Here’s what the batch file looks like:
There are also other tasks that are scheduled to run:
· Disable Windows Update: This is an experimental task to try to control how often Windows Updates are applied to the server.
· Hourly Delta PO Fill and Recalc Committed: The tasks does just that using TechToolkit
· Hourly Incrementals – backup Oracle files to an external hard drive
· V8 Server Process Out – see separate KB article
· Monthly Clear ECM Logs – deletes the ECM Processing file logs at the beginning of each month as well as the ECM Exchange log.
· OpIntel – not used or supported by Retail IQ
· Weekly Reboot – Weekly reboot of the server on Monday nights.
Common Issues:
There are no common issues that occur with Abbadabba’s polling cycle other than the possibility of a connectivity issue exchanging files between the stores and the warehouse (VPN issue, internet is down, etc). The volume of data being polled is minor, so this setup runs pretty well.