How to schedule timer job run every four hour?

Question

I created a Timerjob scheduled on a daily basis. But our requirement is to run the timer job every four hours. How can I achieve this? Someone give me a solution for this.

 string strJobTitle = "SAMPLE";
 JobStatusUpdate.Title = strJobTitle;
 SPSchedule dailySchedule = SPSchedule.FromString("daily at 00:00:00");
 JobStatusUpdate.Schedule = dailySchedule;
 JobStatusUpdate.Update();

This is will run daily 12 AM. How can I set to run every 4 hours ?

Answer 1

You cannot configure a timer job like that. The best approach you can go for is:

• Configure the timer job to use an hourly schedule (run every hour)
• At the start of timer job check if DateTime.Now.Hour is divisible by 4.
• If not, exit the job, if yes - continue.

To set up a timer job to use hourly schedule, use the following code:

string strJobTitle = "SAMPLE";
JobStatusUpdate.Title = strJobTitle;
SPHourlySchedule schedule = new SPHourlySchedule();
schedule.BeginMinute = 0;
schedule.EndMinute = 5;
JobStatusUpdate.Schedule = schedule;
JobStatusUpdate.Update();

This code will configure to run the timer job every hour at the random time between the 1st and 5th minute of the hour.

You can check if the current hour is divisible by 4 with the following code:

(DateTime.Now.Hour % 4 == 0)

This will be true when current hour is 4, 8, 12, 16, 20, and 24 (if there is no '24', then add additional check for '0' hour). Put this as a condition in your timer job's Execute method. If it's true, you continue with the timer job, if it's not - you exit.

SPMinuteSchedule might work for you as well - you configure to run the job every 59 minutes, but you would still need to check what's the current hour.

Any of these two approaches you take, you will have an advantage of saving your timer job configuration (how often should the timer job run) in a list, or WebApp properties, etc.

Answer 2

Option 1:

Hope the reference link below will give you some idea.

https://social.msdn.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/7947d637-dedd-468d-9be3-42addb18c566/how-to-set-the-timer-job-every-one-hour-daily-except-sunday

This is for running the job every one hour. But you can tweak the solution to make it to run for every 4 hours.

Option 2:

Alternately you can try the code below

SPHourlySchedule scheduleHour = new SPHourlySchedule();
scheduleHour.BeginMinute = 1;
scheduleHour.EndMinute = 5;
timerJob.Schedule = scheduleHour;
timerJob.Update()

You can use the SPHourlySchedule class which would schedule your timer job to run every hour. But if you want your timer job to run every 4 hours, then in the execute method of your timer job you need to put an "if" condition to check if the current hour is a divisible of 4.