About Services

The Service Settings window is available from the SmartBatch Administrator File menu, under Service Settings.

A Windows Service is a process that provides functionality to extend the capabilities of the system. This functionality is available to authorized users and persists regardless of who is logged on locally or remotely. In fact no user need be logged onto the system for the service capabilities to exist. A service runs under the control of the Service Control Manager (SCM). A service must be programmed in a specific way so that it properly communicates with the SCM. You have the ability to Start, Stop, Suspend and Continue a service from the Control Panel Services applet. You can use the Control Panel Services applet or the SmartBatch Administrator Service Settings window to control the SmartBatch service.

The following picture shows the Service Settings window Service Control tab. The windows provides you with the ability to set the information about the service and control the service. You can click on "hot spot" areas in the picture below to get detailed information about buttons, controls and fields.

Use the options on the Service Control tab to Start, Stop, Pause and Continue the SmartBatch service. Pausing a service will cause it to suspend processing. You can suspend the processing when you want to temporarily stop SmartBatch processing and then use the Continue button to resume processing.

	Computer
	Indicates the name of the computer on which the Executive Server or Remote Agent is installed. This can be left blank for the local computer, or enter the name of an Windows computer on your network. You will need to have the appropriate access rights to control services.

	Status
	Indicates the current status of the Executive Server service (e.g., Running, On hold, etc.).

	Service
	Select the name of the service you want to control, either the Executive Server or Remote Agent service. The computer selected in the computer field is used in conjunction with this field to determine the service to control.

Service Control buttons

Start button

Starts the selected service.

Stop button

Stops the selected service.

Continue button

Causes a service that has previously been paused to resume processing.

Pause button

Causes the selected service to be paused. A paused service will not process until the Continue button is used. You can use this capability to suspend all SmartBatch 2009 processing.

Ping button

Sends a message to the Executive Server or Remote Agent and determines the amount of time it takes for a response. If no response is received (that is, if a timeout occurs), there is a communications problem between the client computer and server.

1.The ability to control a service requires the appropriate authorization by the logged on user. If the logged on user does not have the necessary authorization to control a service on the computer where the Executive Server or Remote Agent exists, an error message will be displayed.

2.If you suspend or stop processing, the Administrator will no longer be able to communicate with the Executive Server. In order to use the capabilities of the Administrator, you will first need to Continue or Start processing of the Executive Server service.

3.The Executive Server and Remote Agent Server processes accept requests through .NET remote capabilities. The ability to test the communication between the SmartBatch Administrator and the SmartBatch Services can be tested by using the Ping button. This will send a request from the SmartBatch Administrator to the Executive Server or Remote Agent and determine the amount of time it takes for the Administrator to receive a response.

4.You can configure a service in several different ways. It is important that you understand the details so that the outcome of your processing occurs as expected. When you installed the SmartBatch Service it was installed using System Account and Allow Service To Interact with Desktop. The System Account is a special account that is built into the Windows operating system. Allow Service to Interact with Desktop allows the Executive and Notification Servers to display their main forms on the desktop. In addition to this, any program that is run by the Executive Server that displays a form will be visible. You can reconfigure the SmartBatch service so that the Allow Service to Interact with Desktop is unchecked (that is, turned off). In this mode the Executive and Notification Servers main windows are displayed to a screen buffer (that is, virtual desktop) that cannot be seen. This mode is referred to as Silent mode. In Silent mode any program that the Executive Server starts will also be displayed to a screen buffer that you cannot see. In a production environment you may find that the Silent mode is preferred over the Interactive mode (see warning below). You can configure the Service is under a specific account (that is, Login ID). When using a specific account the service will be in Silent mode.

Warning
In Interact mode, your programs may be closed when a User logs off the system. When logoff occurs, Windows will attempt to close all applications started under the current login session. If you want your program started by SmartBatch to persist between logons, your programs must be coded to handle the close window message. In other words, if you want your programs to persist between logons, the programs need to determine that a close message came from the logoff processing and cancel shutting down. If you are not sure that your programs can handle this, you should configure the SmartBatch service in Silent mode (that is, Allow Service to Interact with Desktop is unchecked).

For more information about Windows Services, refer to your Windows documentation.