lal
  •  lal
  • No customer Topic Starter
2008-05-13T03:16:15Z
To address a concern with the VC Server Application stop/start button being invoked accidentally, and without bringing the server application back up, is there a way to:

a) Have an option for VC administrators to remove the button from the main toolbar, and perhaps include it buried in a menu where it is difficult to invoke by accident.

b) Introduce a warning message when the server application is stopped from the VC UI (along the lines of "Warning: This action will stop all scheduled jobs from running; are you sure you want to stop the service?")
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ErikC
2008-05-20T11:58:31Z
Yes, I like this as well.

Some collegue thought he stopped a selected job.... Nothing was working anymore. 🤦
Due to a check I made I started the server asap, but some kind of warning message should be nice.

Regards
Erik
Uses Visualcron since 2006.
lal
  •  lal
  • No customer Topic Starter
2008-05-21T07:32:40Z
Now that I think of it, in addition to a popup warning to the person shutting it down, it would also be nice to get an email notification if the server application is shut down.
Support
2008-05-21T10:13:17Z
It is easy to add quick solutions that solves single problems but my experience tells me that there is better to make more generic solutions. I am having one idea which I am presenting here - please come with comments:

The idea is to extend the VisualCron Event Trigger. Currently we have JobCompleted and JobStarted. But we could extend it to ServerStopped and ServerStarted. What we also could do is to send other events like:

* UserLoggedIn, UserLoggedOff, UnhandledError, etc.

With these events I am thinking to add some Variables that you can pick up from the Trigger. For example we could have one that says "Info" which contains the string "UserLoggedOff". Then we could have another, perhaps called "VerboseInfo" which contains "User X logged off at xx:xx:xx".

Perhaps we can even add some extra settings. Right now we have JobStarted and you select a Job. Let say we add UserLoggedIn then you can select All or a certain User.

By having this as a Trigger you can do whatever you want with the result. Right now you are talking about sending an email but other might want to log to a file.

This solution may give you some extra work configuring (Creating a Job, creating a Trigger and Create your Task) but on the other hand you can use your existing Email connections and do what you want.

What do you think? Also, if you have suggestions of other Internal events in VisualCron that we could add then please tell us.
Henrik
Support
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lal
  •  lal
  • No customer Topic Starter
2008-05-22T03:20:12Z
I agree that it should be generic, and I like the idea of using an extended the internal event trigger. I'll give some more thought to what else might be nice to add.

This deals with the alerting part of the request. There were also two other parts to the request:

a) a popup warning message to the user that is about to shutdown the server.

b) if it would be possible to allow people with full rights to VC to customize the toolbar, or even the rest of the GUI, that other users (especially non-admin users) see. I happen to be interested at the moment in being able to remove the server stop button that all users see on the toolbar, but more generally, it would be nice for administrators to be able to decide how the GUI should appear to other users.

The email is a useful, after-the-fact alert; but the other two items are intended to prevent the server from being accidentally stopped to begin with.

lal
  •  lal
  • No customer Topic Starter
2008-12-18T09:20:31Z
I'd like to follow up on a previous request. I'm especially interested in (b) in the quote below. Is this being considered - allowing VC admins to remove the Server On/Off toolbar button, to disable it, or to relocate it to where it is difficult to invoke by accident?

There was another incident tonight when someone accidentally and unknowingly stopped one of the VC servers. While alerting may be helpful, the most desirable solution would be to make it much more difficult to happen by accident.

lal wrote:

I agree that it should be generic, and I like the idea of using an extended the internal event trigger. I'll give some more thought to what else might be nice to add.

This deals with the alerting part of the request. There were also two other parts to the request:

a) a popup warning message to the user that is about to shutdown the server.

b) if it would be possible to allow people with full rights to VC to customize the toolbar, or even the rest of the GUI, that other users (especially non-admin users) see. I happen to be interested at the moment in being able to remove the server stop button that all users see on the toolbar, but more generally, it would be nice for administrators to be able to decide how the GUI should appear to other users.

The email is a useful, after-the-fact alert; but the other two items are intended to prevent the server from being accidentally stopped to begin with.

ErikC
2008-12-18T09:30:06Z
Hi lal,

What you also can do is reduce the amount of people working with VC. Over here I have two/three people working with it. It happened me once that I clicked on the stop server button. As we dutch people say: 'a donkey never hits the same stone twice'. (actually it is three times, but two is better..)

You can also, if you can not reduce the amount of people using VC, give a presentation of how the software works. This could be a session of max one hour, and everybody knows the purpose of the button.

If people make mistakes, okay it is possible, but doning it several times, restrict acces, no bonus, no... etc

Regards,
Erik

Uses Visualcron since 2006.
adutoit
2008-12-18T14:09:18Z
From version .29 there is now a warning message that appears on the client when the start/stop button is pressed - http://www.visualcron.co...t.aspx?g=posts&t=295 . I don't know if something crept into the code on users permissions since then. You could disable the Start/Stop button in User Permissions and get a "You don't have permission..." message; On .40 the functionality seems now to be gone?

As per the included thread I concur with lal that the Start/Stop button really needs to be better managed by the application. Ideally the only user by default that should have access is Admin; rather provide another category under User Permissions which allows the displaying of the Start/Stop button on the menu per user. Going with "less is more" most of my users don't need to see 95% of the options in the menu-strip; it would be nice as an administrator to be able to configure a 'lite' client by being able to configure the menu-strip per user/group(?).

Regards
Anton
Support
2008-12-18T18:14:16Z
The reason for the stop button is very simple. To immidiately stop further execution. That is why that feature is not hidden. I think we have come along way with the message box but I agree that this has to be added to permissions as well - we will check that.
Henrik
Support
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