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Jobs

Jobs are tasks executing in the background. They handle operations like sending notifications, mass mailing, syncing, cleanup, etc.

In this article:

Scheduled Jobs

Scheduled Jobs are intended for recurring job execution. They are available at Administration > Scheduled Jobs. Scheduling for a specific job can be configured using a crontab notation.

* * * * *
| | | | |
| | | | |
| | | | +---- Day of the Week   (range: 1-7, 1 standing for Monday)
| | | +------ Month of the Year (range: 1-12)
| | +-------- Day of the Month  (range: 1-31)
| +---------- Hour              (range: 0-23)

If you want a job to be run as often as possible, you need to set the scheduling to * * * * *.

Important: Scheduling works in UTC timezone. It doesn't honor the server's timezone. You need to take it into account when you need the scheduling for specific hours.

Setting up

There are two ways how jobs can be processed: with crontab or daemon.

Cron

Cron is easy to configure. It's supported by most hosting providers.

See how to configure cron here.

In Unix systems, cron is supposed to be run not more often than once a minute. It's possible to overcome this limitation with the following trick.

Add multiple lines in crontab with delays in seconds:

* * * * * /usr/bin/php -f /var/www/html/espocrm/cron.php > /dev/null 2>&1
* * * * * sleep 15; /usr/bin/php -f /var/www/html/espocrm/cron.php > /dev/null 2>&1
* * * * * sleep 30; /usr/bin/php -f /var/www/html/espocrm/cron.php > /dev/null 2>&1
* * * * * sleep 45; /usr/bin/php -f /var/www/html/espocrm/cron.php > /dev/null 2>&1

Note that command that runs cron may differ depending on your server environment.

Daemon

Requires pcntl and posix extensions.

It's recommended to turn on processing jobs in parallel processes: Administration > Jobs > Settings (in the top-right corner) > Jobs Run in Parallel. Note: Parallel processing is not supported on Windows environment.

Command to start daemon using nohup:

nohup php /path/to/espocrm/daemon.php &

Using Systemd

Service configuration file: /etc/systemd/system/espocrm-daemon.service

Configuration (file content):

[Unit]
Description=EspoCRM Daemon Service
Requires=mysql.service
After=mysql.service

[Service]
Type=simple
Restart=always
RestartSec=5
StartLimitInterval=0
User=www-data
ExecStart=/usr/bin/php /path/to/espocrm/daemon.php
StandardError=/path/to/espocrm/data/logs/daemon.log

[Install]
WantedBy=default.target

Command to get the service to start on boot:

systemctl enable espocrm-daemon.service

Command to start the service:

systemctl start espocrm-daemon.service

Running jobs in parallel processes

It's highly recommended to enable running jobs in parallel processes.

By default jobs are executed one by one, that may cause situations when one job blocks the execution of the next job for some time (usually it's not more than one minute). To avoid this, it's possible to run jobs in parallel processes. The parameter is available at Administration > Jobs > Settings (in the top-right corner).

Requires pcntl and posix extensions. Some server configurations may restrict the ability to run child processes.

Windows is not supported.

Running specific job manually in CLI

Command:

php command.php run-job JobName

where JobName is an intrernal name of the job you want to run.

Examples:

php command.php run-job Cleanup
php command.php run-job ProcessMassEmail

Jobs available out-of-the-box:

  • CheckEmailAccounts – checks personal email accounts
  • CheckInboundEmails – checks group email accounts
  • Cleanup
  • ProcessWebhookQueue
  • SendEmailNotifications
  • ControlKnowledgeBaseArticleStatus
  • ProcessMassEmail
  • SendEmailReminders
  • SubmitPopupReminders

To print all available jobs run:

bin/command app-info --jobs

Some jobs (CheckEmailAccounts, CheckInboundEmails) require specifying --target-id and --target-type options.

Example:

bin/command run-job CheckEmailAccounts --target-id=[paste_id_of_email_account] --target-type=EmailAccount

See also