Task Scheduler and TODAYs date

There is some confusion about how DC305 will handle scheduled tasks when the "Today" date is not correct. Hopefully this will explain how that works.

Today and the "System Date"

What we call "Today" is the date that Dairy Comp is set to. It can be set to anything, using the SETDAY command. The "System Date" or "Clock Date" is the date the computer is set to.

If the system date is wrong, none of this will work, and all bets are off. It seems over the years we rarely hear about people's clock dates being wrong, I assume due to hardware improvements, as well as automatic date setting by Windows. Anyone who purposely changes their system clock date is violating the rules of physics and deserves any pain they might receive.

Rule for Scheduled Tasks

Tasks will only run when Today is the same as the system date. Tasks are considered "real time" and having the correct date is critical.

We highly recommend that people never use SETDAY. But if they do, DC305 will try to get back to the system date. When the program is idle (at Command Mode) the task timer runs every ten minutes. If possible, it will reset "Today" to the system date. Until that happens, tasks will not run. This is where the confusion comes in. The task timer will reset the date if either of these are true :

1. Today is set to a date beyond the system date, or
2. Today is set within the last three days before the system date.

The first one fixes people who set the date ahead to run reports (which we discourage) The second one explains how the date gets changed automatically at midnight.

As an example, assuming the real date is 6/15/2010 :

If "Today" is set to anything before 6/13, the date will not change. This is mainly for consultants who might be looking at older data.

If Today is set to any date in the future, the task timer will set it back.

"Today"  Result (assuming cleck date is 6/15)
06/11/10 Date will NOT change
06/12/10 Date will NOT change
06/13/10 Date will change to 06/15/10
06/14/10 Date will change to 06/15/10
06/15/10 No change needed
06/16/10 Date will change to 06/15/10
 and so on for all dates in the future.

Again, we discourage using SETDAY, it can cause problems especially when synch dates and other vet dates are set based on Today. And anyone who imports transactions, either from DCCLIENT, PCC, or itrans imports, has learned by now that DC305 will complain loudly when the date is not set properly.