Cron job execution statistics and separate failure logs added

In order to help users inspect the execution status of their cron jobs, we added cron job execution statistics and separate failure logs to EasyCron.

You may see the cron job execution statistics (including the total number of successful executions （TS）, total number of failed executions (TF) and number of consecutive failed executions (CF)) in the cron job list:

Cron job execution statistics

If there is non-zero "total failures" in any of your cron job rows, the background color of the number will turn red. You should check these outstanding rows immediately to resolve the potential problems.

Besides the general Logs and Predictions, we implemented a feature that keeps failure logs separately from the general logs. With this feature, you can analyze the logged failures at any time, and have no need to worry about the "flowing away" of the oldest logs.

For existent cron jobs, we started logging the execution statistics and separate failures from Feb 27 2014 13:19:00 UTC. Please keep in mind this point when evaluating your cron jobs' health.

Below we list how do the user behaviors affect the logs and statistics data.

	Change Settings	Enable Log	Disable Log	Enable Cron Job	Disable Cron Job
General Logs	Clear	Clear	Clear	-	-
Separate Failure Logs	Clear	Clear	Clear	-	-
Total Success Count	Reset	Reset	Reset	-	-
Total Failure Count	Reset	Reset	Reset	-	-
Consecutive Failure Count	Reset	Reset	Reset	Reset	-

In above table, "Clear" means deleting all logs; "Reset" means changing the number to zero; "-" means doing nothing.

"Change Settings" includes any actions that can change cron job settings excepting "Enable Logs", "Disable Logs", "Enable Cron Job" and "Disable Cron Job".

Cron job groups added. Categorization and reordering made possible.

Hi Everyone,

We just added a new "Groups" feature to our system.

From now on, you can create groups, and categorize your cron jobs into different group conveniently. Just simply click on the switcher:

Cron job group view switcher

You will come to a Group View of the cron job list. In the Group View, you can drag cron jobs to categorize or reorder them, and you can also reorder the groups! (check below screenshots)

Drag to categorize/reorder cron jobs

Drag to reorder cron job groups

With the powerful "Groups" feature, you won't get lost in long cron job list again :)

We consider our system's user experience as the most important thing. If you have any advice, let us know.

EasyCron Affiliate Program Launched

Today we proudly launched EasyCron Affiliate Program.

Earn up to $9.99 or more by referring a paid user! Join our Affiliate Program now!

Steps:

• Register as EasyCron user
• On On affiliate page, click on "Add affiliate page" to add an affiliate page (A webpage that you want to place our link on).
• We approve the affiliate page.
• You place our link on your affiliate page.
• Start earning commissions.

Any suggestion, drop us a line.

How to test if your cron job is correctly set

After setting up a cron job on server, you may want to know if the cron job was correctly configured, and if the execution date and time will be same as you assume.

To make sure your cron job has correct trigger date and time, you can use our cron job execution time predictor.

To generate a working crontab line, you may use our crontab generator.

After you add the cron job to the system, if you're an idealist, you may also want to test if the cron job really work.

To test the cron job you added, put the following PHP code into a PHP file, upload it to your server. Upload another text file named "output.txt" (make sure you have "write" permission to it). Set up a cron job to trigger the PHP file.

<?php
define('TIMEZONE', 'UTC');
date_default_timezone_set(TIMEZONE);

$fh = fopen('/home/xxx/public_html/output.txt', 'a');
echo $fh;
echo fwrite($fh, date('Y-m-d H:i:s', time()) . "\r\n");

fclose($fh);

?>

When the scheduled time pasts, you may check if output.txt was written with some content. If it did, congratulations! Your cron job is working perfectly.

Updates to cron job UI and API

We allow users using three ways to specify cron jobs' execution time from now on:

New UI to configure cron job

As you can see in above screenshot (highlighted in green), you can specify when to execute your cron jobs:

• By time interval

  You may set cron job's execution time interval easily by choosing an option:
  
  
  Set up cron job by execution interval
  EasyCron will generate a Cron expression for your cron job. The final execution date and time of your cron job will meet your interval setting, with a random starting time. For example, for a cron job run every 10 minutes, the final Cron expression we generated could be 0/10 * * * *, or 6/10 * * * *, the latter means, the cron job starts running at "06" minute, and then be triggered every 10 minutes.
  

• By entering a Cron expression directly

  We support standard Cron expression that used in several mainstream Cron implements (Cronie, Vixie cron and Quartz java scheduler, etc.). If you already have Cron expressions for your cron jobs, or you're adept at writing them, this could be a convenient yet powerful way to specify execution time of your cron jobs.
  Besides general specicial characters, EasyCron also supports "R" character in cron expression. "R" is defined by EasyCron for specifying random execution time of cron jobs. To see details of its usage, you may check our Random Cron Job section.
  

• Choose manually

  
  Choose execution times and dates of cron job
  This is a intuitional way to configure dates and times to run your cron jobs. No matter you're a novice or an expert, you'll find the interface helpful. It supports all special chars including "R".
  

We also updated our API to adapt the cron expression improvement:

• Parameter changes:

  Simplifying parameters of queries, using only one paramter (cron_expression) to indicate the run time of a cron job instead of 5 (minute, hour, day, month, weekday).
  

• Error message changes:

  Changed some error messages.
  

For more details, please checkout our API document page.
Hope that anyone will enjoy the extremely easier process of managing cron jobs. If you have any suggestion, feel free to leave a message at our contact page.

One-click Sign up and Sign in to Manage Cron Jobs

We recently added a feature to EasyCron that will greatly simplify users' signing up and signing in process on our system.

From now on, new users can sign up with just one click (and confirmation) to use EasyCron.

Advantages:

• No user details need to be entered,
• no typos will occur,
• no activation Email checking,
• no Email delivery failure.

All you need to have is your browser has connected with Facebook or Google. We will retrieve your Email address (we just need your Email address, no other sensitive information will be retrieved) safely and generated a user account for you. At the same timie the login information of this generated account will be sent to your Email address in case you want to login in a general way.

Users registered by this mean can log in with one lick. So you don't have to worry about forgetting username or password anymore.

you're one click away from our powerful online cron job service. Sound good, right? ;)

New Version EasyCron.com Rolled out

Today we proudly rolled out a new version of EasyCron. It's a big update to many components of the system, including:

• New Design

  We replaced the old design with a fresh and inspiring new design. The change covers every pages and elements of the system. We believe you will be pleased with it.

• More AJAX

  We utilize more AJAX in cron job management process. You will notice that cron job management (enabling, disabling cron job, etc) is much easier than before.

• Bulk Actions

  Bulk Actions were requested by our users for many times. I need to say sorry about keeping them waiting, but we want to think over it thoroughly before building it :) Now it's done. I think the bulk action list shown below have covered most of the frequently used actions. If there is action we missed, let me know.

  
  Handle multiple cron jobs quickly

• Better Notices

  Some users may find that JS alerts are not that user-friendly, especially when these alerts are popped up with browser's "preventing these messages to show again" confirmation. We also see that. So we use light boxes and AJAX in-page notices in some cases this time.

• Responsive Design

  We attempt to pull-in responsive design to facilitate mobile users' using. Considering more and more users are connecting to EasyCron via cellphone, responsive design is a must. The responsive design is not implement on all elements throughout the site, if you have any advice, contact us.

• Google Custom Search Integration

  From now on, users can search our site conveniently via a Google custom search box added on the navigation bar. The search engine can search all public pages of EasyCron including FAQs, ToS, general pages, etc.. We hope it will save your time on searching information on our site.

• Page Row Settings

  For user who has huge number of cron jobs, we add a helpful feature to achieve better cron job navigation. This new feature is allowing user to custom the row number that each page of cron jobs has.

That's all. If you have any suggestion, send us a message.

Thanks for reading!

EasyCron.com Team